Academic Book Reviews
Aug. 26th, 2014 12:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rebeccmeisterHere's a list of some high-caliber academic books I have been working on reading recently. Getting to read this stuff is one of the huge perks of this job. My standard strategy for academic books is to obtain a library copy to read first. If I find the book sufficiently useful, I purchase a copy (usually a used copy).
Physiological Ecology: How Animals Process Energy, Nutrients, and Toxins, by William H. Karasov and Carlos Martinez del Rio. This work is mostly vertebrate-focused, but contains numerous useful things for an invertebrate physiologist as well, and is necessary reading for the purpose of being able to conduct cross-talk about organismal physiological ecology. The thing is, in many cases, people have worked out an understanding of how animals work in vertebrate systems separately from the people who have worked out an understanding of how animals work in invertebrate systems. Both the similarities and differences are fascinating. One thing I found most telling is how K&M have subdivided their topics - digestive physiology is covered in great depth, but is discussed completely separately from "Production in Budgets of Mass and Energy." I wish I had read this book when it first came out in 2007. I would make it required reading for graduate students. I'm going to buy a copy as soon as I can.
Mechanisms of Life History Evolution: The Genetics and Physiology of Life History Traits and Trade-Offs, edited by Thomas Flatt and Andreas Heyland. A rich text for the purpose of gaining perspective on the approaches used to study life history evolution - that is, how to understand the diverse forms of life found all around us on this planet today. This is a meaty text, and some of the contributed chapters are stronger and more articulate than others, so I would recommend skipping around. That said - there's stuff on both vertebrates and invertebrates in here, and I decided it was worthwhile to buy my own copy.
Similarly, I'm finding Experimental Evolution: Concepts, Methods, and Applications, edited by Theodore Garland, Jr., and Michael Rose, to be so worthwhile that I've just ordered a copy of this book, too. I've been hesitant to label myself as an evolutionary biologist in part because I've felt like I've lacked the perspective and tools in my toolbox to do the work of evolutionary biologists. If I can manage to sit down and work my way through this entire book, I think I'll gain the confidence to be able to call myself an evolutionary biologist. I've covered subtopics associated with evolutionary biology (social evolution, population ecology), but this book looks like it will provide the scope of the field as a whole.
More specific books:
Ecological and Environmental Physiology of Insects, by Jon Harrison, Art Woods, and Stephen Roberts. One of my Ph.D. committee members is a coauthor on this book, so I might be a bit biased. I think this book provides a nice complement to Chapman's The Insects: Structure and Function, as a good introductory text to topics in insect physiological ecology. EEPI has been written to be accessible to newcomers in the field. It's not a huge subdiscipline, but it's a cool one to work in. I might be biased on that front, too.
Organization of Insect Societies: From Genome to Sociocomplexity, edited by Jennifer Fewell and Juergen Gadau. This is another situation where I might be biased because I know both editors quite well. Ahem. As with Mechanisms of Life History Evolution, I would recommend that interested readers pick and choose among the chapters - some are excellent and well-written, while in my view others don't do full justice to their subject. One feature I appreciate about this book and also EEPI is that both books explicitly talk about the future directions for their respective fields. Some graduate-level textbooks can make it sound as though we already know everything we need to know about a subject, which is far from what a graduate student should come to understand over the course of her graduate studies. Why not make that fact apparent, and give future students a leg up on figuring out how to construct a thesis or dissertation?
Ecological Stoichiometry: The Biology of Elements from Molecules to the Biosphere, by Robert Sterner and Jim Elser. Hmm, a protip has just occurred to me: if a grad student's dissertation committee members have written books, it would be wise for that graduate student to read those books. Which is to say, this is another one written by a committee member. I grappled with aspects of ES. On the one hand, it's well-written and covers a fascinating perspective for understanding how the biological world works. On the other hand, it doesn't quite cover some crucial things that an insect nutritional physiologist needs to know and think about, because insects don't eat carbon. For those crucial things, the insect nutritional physiologist needs to turn to The Nature of Nutrition: A Unifying Framework from Animal Adaptation to Human Obesity, by Stephen J. Simpson and David Raubenheimer. She also needs to read some contemporary papers on the subject, but these two books will provide a solid starting point.
For the Attine-ologist, I would suggest Herbivory of Leaf-Cutting Ants: A Case Study on Atta colombica in the Tropical Rainforest, by Wirth, Herz, Ryal, Beyschlag, and Holldobler. It's important to read this book before reading The Leafcutter Ants: Civilization by Instinct, by Bert Holldobler and E.O. Wilson, or The Superorganism : The beauty, Elegance, and Strangeness of Insect Societies (also by Holldobler and Wilson). These two books have their place as inspirational and accessible texts, but they are too superficial for graduate studies. Reading Wirth et al. will make this sufficiently clear.
I think I will stop there for now. This list covers most of the books sitting on my work bookshelf these days, other than the stats textbooks.
Physiological Ecology: How Animals Process Energy, Nutrients, and Toxins, by William H. Karasov and Carlos Martinez del Rio. This work is mostly vertebrate-focused, but contains numerous useful things for an invertebrate physiologist as well, and is necessary reading for the purpose of being able to conduct cross-talk about organismal physiological ecology. The thing is, in many cases, people have worked out an understanding of how animals work in vertebrate systems separately from the people who have worked out an understanding of how animals work in invertebrate systems. Both the similarities and differences are fascinating. One thing I found most telling is how K&M have subdivided their topics - digestive physiology is covered in great depth, but is discussed completely separately from "Production in Budgets of Mass and Energy." I wish I had read this book when it first came out in 2007. I would make it required reading for graduate students. I'm going to buy a copy as soon as I can.
Mechanisms of Life History Evolution: The Genetics and Physiology of Life History Traits and Trade-Offs, edited by Thomas Flatt and Andreas Heyland. A rich text for the purpose of gaining perspective on the approaches used to study life history evolution - that is, how to understand the diverse forms of life found all around us on this planet today. This is a meaty text, and some of the contributed chapters are stronger and more articulate than others, so I would recommend skipping around. That said - there's stuff on both vertebrates and invertebrates in here, and I decided it was worthwhile to buy my own copy.
Similarly, I'm finding Experimental Evolution: Concepts, Methods, and Applications, edited by Theodore Garland, Jr., and Michael Rose, to be so worthwhile that I've just ordered a copy of this book, too. I've been hesitant to label myself as an evolutionary biologist in part because I've felt like I've lacked the perspective and tools in my toolbox to do the work of evolutionary biologists. If I can manage to sit down and work my way through this entire book, I think I'll gain the confidence to be able to call myself an evolutionary biologist. I've covered subtopics associated with evolutionary biology (social evolution, population ecology), but this book looks like it will provide the scope of the field as a whole.
More specific books:
Ecological and Environmental Physiology of Insects, by Jon Harrison, Art Woods, and Stephen Roberts. One of my Ph.D. committee members is a coauthor on this book, so I might be a bit biased. I think this book provides a nice complement to Chapman's The Insects: Structure and Function, as a good introductory text to topics in insect physiological ecology. EEPI has been written to be accessible to newcomers in the field. It's not a huge subdiscipline, but it's a cool one to work in. I might be biased on that front, too.
Organization of Insect Societies: From Genome to Sociocomplexity, edited by Jennifer Fewell and Juergen Gadau. This is another situation where I might be biased because I know both editors quite well. Ahem. As with Mechanisms of Life History Evolution, I would recommend that interested readers pick and choose among the chapters - some are excellent and well-written, while in my view others don't do full justice to their subject. One feature I appreciate about this book and also EEPI is that both books explicitly talk about the future directions for their respective fields. Some graduate-level textbooks can make it sound as though we already know everything we need to know about a subject, which is far from what a graduate student should come to understand over the course of her graduate studies. Why not make that fact apparent, and give future students a leg up on figuring out how to construct a thesis or dissertation?
Ecological Stoichiometry: The Biology of Elements from Molecules to the Biosphere, by Robert Sterner and Jim Elser. Hmm, a protip has just occurred to me: if a grad student's dissertation committee members have written books, it would be wise for that graduate student to read those books. Which is to say, this is another one written by a committee member. I grappled with aspects of ES. On the one hand, it's well-written and covers a fascinating perspective for understanding how the biological world works. On the other hand, it doesn't quite cover some crucial things that an insect nutritional physiologist needs to know and think about, because insects don't eat carbon. For those crucial things, the insect nutritional physiologist needs to turn to The Nature of Nutrition: A Unifying Framework from Animal Adaptation to Human Obesity, by Stephen J. Simpson and David Raubenheimer. She also needs to read some contemporary papers on the subject, but these two books will provide a solid starting point.
For the Attine-ologist, I would suggest Herbivory of Leaf-Cutting Ants: A Case Study on Atta colombica in the Tropical Rainforest, by Wirth, Herz, Ryal, Beyschlag, and Holldobler. It's important to read this book before reading The Leafcutter Ants: Civilization by Instinct, by Bert Holldobler and E.O. Wilson, or The Superorganism : The beauty, Elegance, and Strangeness of Insect Societies (also by Holldobler and Wilson). These two books have their place as inspirational and accessible texts, but they are too superficial for graduate studies. Reading Wirth et al. will make this sufficiently clear.
I think I will stop there for now. This list covers most of the books sitting on my work bookshelf these days, other than the stats textbooks.
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no subject
Date: 2014-08-26 06:40 pm (UTC)1: for values of "weak math skills" equal to "doesn't understand tensors".
no subject
Date: 2014-08-26 07:05 pm (UTC)I just observed this, which makes me think I might be tempted to do a tad more physics reading, myself. But not anything nearly as complex as you. I don't know things about tensors at all, I suspect because my last physics class was AP physics in high school.
no subject
Date: 2014-08-26 07:15 pm (UTC)Oooh, Feynman lectures!