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The Beauty of the Beastly
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 574
EAN: 9780395791479
Edition: 1
ISBN: 0395791472
Label: Mariner Books
Manufacturer: Mariner Books
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 304
Publication Date: April 04, 1996
Publisher: Mariner Books
Studio: Mariner Books
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Editorial Review:
Natalie Angier knows all that scientists know - and sometimes more - about the power of symmetry in sexual relations, about the brutal courting habits of dolphins, about the grand deceit of orchids, about the impact of female and male preferences on evolution. She knows how scientists go about their work, and she describes their ways, their visions, and their arguments. Perhaps most poignantly, she understands the complexities and the sad necessity of death. "The beauty of the natural world lies in the details, and most of those details are not the stuff of calendar art," she points out. Few writers have ever covered so many facets of biology so evocatively in one book. The Beauty of the Beastly tells us how the genius of the biological universe resides in its details and proves why, according to Timothy Ferris, author of the acclaimed Coming of Age in the Milky Way, Angier is "one of the strongest and wittiest science writers in the world today."
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - The Unapologetic Anthropomorphist
Natalie Angier explains in the introduction to her collected that while there is a raging debate in the science community on the "propriety of anthropomorphism," she weighs in with the anthropomorphists to the point of anthropomorphizing plants and even molecules. And it is this empathy that Angier feels with the lowliest that makes this such a fascinating and ultimately educational read.
The chapters are short, as they are reworked columns printed previously in the New York Times, ... Read More
Rating: - This book will make you feel smart
I picked up this book after Angier's WOMAN: An Intimate Geography became one of my favorites a year ago. The author's humor and vivid descriptions of biological topics from DNA transciption and protein translation to animal behavior to evolution brings the understanding of science within reach for the general reader.
The book is a collection of articles published in the New York Times in the early- to mid-nineties. My favorite chapters were the one about scorpions (made my skin crawl!), ... Read More
Rating:  - Up close to life
Angier's urge to teach us all about Nature is irrepressible. Metaphor is her bow, with anthropomorphism a valuable arrow in her quiver. Enzymes become muscular bodyguards, orchids are lazy, deceptive, or magnanimous and scorpions can be "model spouses and parents." Such imagry will leave many "bench scientists" aghast at her "softening" the science, but others, and we readers, applaud her ability at stripping away the arcane aspects of dealing with Nature's wonders. She exposes life with a fresh ... Read More
Rating: - Learning to love the cockroach
Natalie Angier admits that she had a childhood phobia about roaches; for me it was spiders; I'm sure it's snakes for many others. Angier writes with this recognition; although she still doesn't love roaches, she respects them and is quite able to get us to admire, respect, and appreciate whatever it is in nature that makes our skin crawl. This book is a collection of insightful essays on nature written in her inimitable style. Pure wonder, and humor in all she sees. If nature were a three ring circus ... Read More
Rating: - A book that made me yelp with joy
I am a noisy reader. I groan when I come across clumsy wordings or badly twisted sentences. I sigh when I am bored. I snort when I encounter assertions that are (in my view) outrageous. And occasionally, meeting up with prose that startles me with its elegance, vividness, and originality, I find myself uttering an involuntary yelp of sheer joy. Mind you, this doesn't happen very often. It doesn't happy very often at all when I'm reading pieces about science, and certainly not when the subjects of the ... Read More
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