100 books like The Beak of the Finch

This is Darwin’s first book, the story of his five-year journey around the world. It starts in 1831 when he was 22.

The Beagle sailed where there was no government, no law, no hospital, and plenty of bandits and other things that might kill you. To get around, Darwin needed to rent or buy horses and just go. Maybe meet the Beagle in 10 days’ time further up the coast. Or maybe not. Even though it nearly killed him, it shines through that Darwin loved this adventure, and I loved reading about it.

Darwin was probably the greatest naturalist who ever lived. It’s a joy to read his first encounters with geological and biological phenomena, always followed by a theory of how they came to be. I’m struck by his clarity of thought and how fresh his ideas are.

Many people don't realise that the Galápagos Islands are inhabited. Settlers began to arrive in the middle of the 20th century. Before that, there were pirates, convicts, and oddballs, then pioneers from Europe.

In the 1930s five brothers, the Angermeyers, arrived, fleeing Hitler's Germany. I met Johanna Angermeyer, whose father was one of those brothers. Little did I know the amazing story behind how she got there. Johanna grew up in California, her mother once married to an Ecuadorian pilot. He died in a plane crash, then she had a romance with one of the brothers in Quito, but he died too.

She decided to visit the Galápagos Islands with her mother. They stayed, living a Robinson Crusoe life. Her story tells how hard it was. Later, Johanna met a British sailor and decided to settle. He was crew on the first sailing boats that took tourists around the enchanted… show more.

After all that science it’s fun to have a surreal fantasy.

It’s a million years in the future, under the watchful eye of a ghost, a shipwrecked boat strands a motley group of people from all over the world on an island. When the humans destroy the planet with World War III and become infertile, they evolve into aquatic furry creatures with webbed feet.

Vonnegut turns evolution on its head. His ‘Nature Cruise of the Century’ made me laugh and reminds me of some of the characters I’ve had to deal with on my own yacht charters. In some ways I think Vonnegut was prophetic.

When I first arrived in the Galápagos, I thought the plants consisted of a few drab cacti and thorn bushes. As I explored, I discovered that the unique flora was as fascinating as the reptiles and birds.

There are giant prickly pears, tree-like sunflowers, and rare orchids in the humid highlands. What I could have used was a good field guide to the plants. Conley McMullen has produced just that (albeit after I left). Now, when I go back, I can take this invaluable guide with me. He covers the endemic plants as well as some of the many exotic introduced flowers. Some have become invasive pests, such as the mora blackberry, and guava fruit.

As the conservation organisations turn their attention to restoring the islands to what they once were, this book is still of great value.

I had known the authors for decades, as friends and neighbors, so when their book came out it took me by surprise, even more so when I discovered just how outstanding it is. This is a remarkable blend of meticulously researched historical facts about the life of the great 19th-century naturalist Charles Darwin, combined with sensitive commentary by retracing his Galapagos experiences step-by-step, as well as his life before and after. Every page is engaging, delving deep into his thoughts through his notes and correspondence, and his personal observations and how they led to his revolutionary theory of evolution.

A more conceptual connection to evolution, this creative book introduces the amazing fact of life and introduces young readers to the fact that all life on Earth is related. I love the way the vibrant illustrations track development from cells to creatures and show how humans, mammals, fish, reptiles, and birds are connected. With back matter to support adults to explain evolution in an age-appropriate way, this story can be a great introduction to answering the question “where do people come from?”

When you remember that life on our planet has been almost completely annihilated five times already, perhaps it makes you appreciate the ephemerality of our existence, the diversity of flora, fauna, and fungi on earth, our planet’s many gifts, etc. But when you realize that human behaviors in the age of capitalism and globalization are tantamount to the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs, it makes you want to wake up from this nightmare.

This book offers an amazing history lesson about archaeology and how we have learned about our planet’s ancient history. But it also provides a sobering wake-up call, a plea for preserving biological diversity, a dirge for its snowballing disappearance. Species are going extinct at 1,000 times the natural rate.

The brain people are all over art.

Anjan Chatterjee has managed to write a book that a) is very accessible, b) provides thorough coverage of current attempts to understand art and aesthetic experience by using information from the cognitive sciences, and c) outlines an original hypothesis about why humans evolved a love for art. That last part changes the book from a nice review of the topic to a groundbreaking attempt at an explanation of our art practices.

Chatterjee examines our judgments of peoples’ attractiveness, the brain’s system of reward chemicals, and our evolutionary history, in an attempt to understand our passion for art scientifically. 

In an upcoming book on art, I refer to Chatterjee frequently. I don’t always agree with him, but his sensible, clear, and broad approach made his book very useful to me. 

I am working on a theory that viruses were crucial in the evolution of higher organisms and major evolutionary breakthroughs. This book is about that very topic.

It is full of incredible information and has me jumping with excitement. Seeing a scientist who shares my ideas is exciting. It is well-written and comprehensible. The examples are great. I found it thought-provoking and could hardly wait to read the part I had not yet read!

I love books that challenge me to question established systems and science writer Angela Saini does this with tour-de-force narrative skills in Inferior.

In this book, Saini examines how gender bias influences the scientific community, and critically, the research it produces. She dives right into the idea that men are thought to be superior, and challenges readers to go a level deeper in the debate about why men dominate.