Amateur Books

Howard Chapelle has done a wonderful job explaining and giving general guidelines for laying out a yacht on paper. It is suggested reading by most Yacht design schools and considering the wealth of information offered one does not have to ask why.

There is only one draw back, all formulas are for the US measurements. For those of us who prefer to use the metric system instead of the US, no conversion is offered. A slight draw back since more modern books will provide updated theories and Metric formulas on hull design. This book helps you understand what the more advanced books are talking about.

Raffles himself is indeed great fun, I love the idea of an upper-class young Englishman who takes to crime rather than get a job, which after all would interfere with his high society life and amateur cricket career. The book is a series of related stories, each slyly witty and subversive, each a clever detective story in reverse.

The reason they were indeed detective stories in reverse is simple: E.W. Hornung was the brother-in-law of Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries. Hornung wrote these stories partly as a satire on Holmes (and Watson, his narrator "Bunny" is a rock-stupid, dead-on parody), and partly just to annoy. It worked, Conan Doyle worried about this book's effect on the public morals!

Now, who wouldn't enjoy a book written to annoy a self-righteous in-law? Especially if the book is actually good? (The book was later made into a weak film starring David Niven, and inspired "To Catch a Thief")

It deals with just about every aspect of nature all at a very easy to read level for either the casual stroller to the serious student. So you can gather walk along and enjoy knowing what things are actually learn about a certain plants or animals. This is really fun book I take it along on road trips with my kids and have a blast at the beach collecting pill bugs and burrowing ghost shrimp. Now that I know there names I can tell everyone what they are.

Morris' account of his life is candid, thought-provoking, and most of all, utterly hilarious. The story of Konrad Lorenz's mishap with a hungry crow honestly made me laugh until I cried.

Anyone who liked "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" will enjoy "Animal Days" just as much. It's a tragedy that this book is out of print.

This is an entertaining autobiographical account of Desmond Morris's life as a lover of animals. Morris was not only a television personality in England, with his "Zoo Time" show, but was also curator of mammals at the London Zoo for several years. He got his Ph.D. in Ethology from Oxford, and is best known for his book, "The Naked Ape," although he has written many scientific articles and several other books as well.

Morris writes well, and this book is composed primarily of anecdotes, many humorous, of his experiences with animals as well as several well-known people, some of which were less than flattering. His doctoral dissertation was on the Ten-spined Stickleback (a fish). While the book describes some of his adventures with the fish, and his roomful of aquariums, there is little about the contribution to science in his dissertation. He also worked with birds and mammals, and again the book is replete with anecdotes, but short on scientific information.

Although he claims to be an ethologist (one who studies animal behavior in their natural habitat without disturbing them), virtually his entire experience, as evidenced by this autobiographical account, has been with imprisoned zoo inmates who, by definition, are not in their natural environment at all, and are often "humanized," a fact about which he complains.

I was a bit troubled by his reference to "Hemingway-cowards," referring to big-game hunters, since I have been a hunter, although I suppose it is normal for an animal lover to hate hunters. I thought the slur against Hemingway was gratuitous and uncalled for. He also describes his love of non-representational art--particularly surrealism--and his encounters with Salvatore Dali, Pablo Picasso, Dylan Thomas and others are entertaining.

In this book, as well as in "The Naked Ape," Morris briefly mentions Alister Hardy, whom he knew, and who was a pioneer of the Aquatic Ape Theory (AAT). He does not derogate the theory directly, but neither does he grant it credibility--rather, he quotes a derogative remark about it. Pity. In "The Naked Ape" he clearly favors the Savannah Theory, which proposes that the proto-humans dropped from the trees in their receding arboreal environment onto the savannah, running as bipeds, and shed their fur in an attempt to cool off from their exertion; a theory which ignores the fact that quadrupedal running is much more efficient than bipedal, that the fastest animals on earth are quadrupeds, and that they are covered with fur. It also ignores the human subcutaneous layer of fat, the only possible use for which is warmth--common in other re-entries, like whales. Only the aquatic theory makes sense given all of those qualities.

Morris is a great popularizer of anthropology, in the same sense that Carl Sagan was a popularizer of astronomy and space travel. Both men have their detractors among serious scientists, but both have contributed much to popular interest in their respective fields.

Joseph H Pierre