cover image CAPTIVATING LIFE: A Naturalist in the Age of Genetics

CAPTIVATING LIFE: A Naturalist in the Age of Genetics

John C. Avise, . . Smithsonian Institute, $24.95 (212pp) ISBN 978-1-56098-957-8

In this satisfying autobiography cum scientific monograph, Avise (Phylogeography) details his intellectual evolution. He convincingly conveys how his dual passion for natural history and genetics sprang from a Michigan boyhood, with summers spent at his grandparents' homestead on Ice Lake, where his love for the natural world first flowered, to his sterling academic career at the Universities of Michigan and Texas, to field and laboratory research. While most other biologists have been confined to one or the other discipline, the author moves with wonder through these two realms, illuminating each with insights from the other. Along the way, he treats the reader to adventures with creatures from aquatic insects and blind cave fish to gophers. No less compelling are the writer's laboratory-bound studies of genetics and DNA. The latter may be dense for the lay reader, but these sections are redeemed by his jargon-free anecdotes of life in the field and underwater. The whole story is enlivened and humanized by Avise's biographical reference points. We clearly see the roots of the sophisticated scientist in the lab coat in the north-country boy with his bamboo pole and worms, angling for perch. On occasion the author's ego obscures his sturdy prose, though these lapses are overcome by guileless confessions of personal and professional faults. Illus. Photos. (Sept.)