Emily: Hey, I am currently on the road filming our three-part 3-hour series for PBS
So I'm actually not here right now, except we filmed this in the past. So I am.
Here are some books that I like.
Emily: I don't have all these books because I have a library card so some of them are from the library.
But anyway, here's one.
It's called Timefulness, how thinking like a geologist can help save the world, by Marcia Bjornerud.
So trying to wrap one's mind around deep time concepts
Like the fact that our planet is 4.5 billion years old and modern-day humans have
only been around for the last 2 million years
Which is about 0.04 percent of all of that time is understandably super challenging.
This book can help with that
It's a great introduction for how geologists wrap their minds around concepts
of deep time and outlines how imperative it is for us,
We humans, to start trying to think beyond a few family generations and to better
understand the long-term impact of our actions today, which is why I like that book.
The next book is The Dinosaur Artist, obsession, betrayal, and the quest for Earth's
ultimate trophy, by Paige Williams
So this book is really interesting because it focuses on two different areas of the commercial fossil industry
Which is the legal side of the commercial fossil industry and the illegal side
of the commercial fossil industry especially looking at some amazing
Fossils that have been found in the last couple of years in Mongolia.
So if you want a true crime story that investigates
auction houses and specimen preparation and fossil finds
it's a really good one to pick up.
The next book that has an
intersection with Natural History Museum's and true crime is The Feather Thief,
Beauty obsession in the natural history heist of the century by Kirk Wallace Johnson.
This might have been the best and most infuriating book
I've read in the last year
It's an artfully written true crime story of how one man's greed and infatuation with the art of fly tying
Led to the break-in and theft of historically and scientifically valuable
specimens of birds from the Natural History Museum in Tring
and as someone who has devoted the last eight years of their life to trying
to help other people understand the importance of museum collections it hit really close to home
It's kind of tough to read but it's super well-written and I highly recommend
it for anybody who likes Natural History Museums.
Makes me angry. This book makes me mad.
Our next book is Rambunctious Garden, saving nature in a post wild world by Emma Maris
We mentioned it this book in our episode Go Outside, but I think it's worth resharing.
So when I moved to Chicago from Montana
I had a really hard time adjusting to living in this big urban environment and I really struggled to find
"nature" around me.
Emma Maris talks about this in her book
And it really helped me to redefine what being in nature means to me now living in a city
So it turns out that there is no escaping nature for better or worse nature is all around you.
Now I see it more clearly.
Our next book is Zoo Nebraska, the dismantling of an American dream, by Carson Vaughan
This is a really sad story of a good idea going very badly
It details the rise and fall of Zoo Nebraska, which was a wildlife Zoo in primate house in the tiny town of Royal
Nebraska, population 63.
The zoo was started by a college graduate who aspired to work with Dian Fossey
studying mountain gorillas in Africa
before her murder in 1985
he eventually sought to establish his own primate research program
in his hometown of Royal and it didn't really work out well for
anyone involved.
Anyway, it's not a cheerful read but it's a really interesting story of
small town project mismanagement and is ultimately
probably Leslie Knope's worst nightmare.
That's what I kept thinking when I was reading it
I was like this one if Parks and Rec took this over. It'd be a very different story
Our next book is Primates, the fearless science of Jane Goodall,
Dian Fossey and Biruté Galdikas, by Jim Ottaviani
and Mari Swicks.
Speaking of Dian Fossey if you'd like an introduction to her work as well as fame
primatologist Jane Goodall and Biruté Galdikas, this graphic novel is a great place to begin.
These were three students of
paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey who went on to pave new roads for primate research in Africa
So they're awesome women who had interesting research programs the back cover of this is adorable,
the illustrations are great, stories are charming.
I like chimpanzees.
This is a really fun one for Brain Scoop viewers
It's called Stuffed Animals, a guide to modern taxidermy, by
Brain Scoop friends Divya Anantharamn and Katy Innamorato.
They've been on the show.
If you've been looking for a great how-to taxidermy guide, boy, are you in luck.
This one came out a few years ago
but it's really great and it has a lot of step-by-step guides for doing some of your first taxidermy
this book will even show you how you can make your own two-headed parakeet,
and it even has recipes in the back for things like
woodchuck tacos, and these like cradling
jalapeno
You should buy this book just for this still life
And for our last book, of course
I have to mention that Field Museum put out a book last year to celebrate
125 moments in the natural history of the Field Museum
if you loved learning about the history and the behind-the-scenes work of Natural History Museums
and especially of the Field Museum
This one gives you a really good snapshot of how our museum
has changed and grown in the last hundred twenty-five years and bonus
There's even brain scoop in it, I'm in the book check it out
It's an octopus.
I hope you like these books and if you go check them out, make sure to let me know
I'd love to hear what you thought about them.
And, as always, if you have recommendations for me, feel free to leave them in the comments below
That's below that's my that's my indication. Okay. Bye
it still has brains on it