Even more great reads from the history of natural history

Image: Jackdaw by ivabalk, CC0 via pixabay.com

Research for my new book has had me reading a lot of books about the history of natural history. Some are well known, some are obscure; some are old; some are new. (Some were borrowed, and this time around, one was blue.)  Here are four more minireviews (in no particular order), in case the pile of books you’ve been meaning to read isn’t big enough.

Mrs. Moreau’s Warbler: How Birds Got Their Names (Moss 2018, Faber and Faber).  This charming book explores the etymologies of the common names of birds.

Advertisement

The unluckiest naturalist ever

Image: Ambrose Palisot de Beauvois (public domain).

Writing my forthcoming book has taken me down a lot of rabbitholes.  Many of them have involved the history of science, and especially, the history of natural history.  I’ve learned about naturalists who were heroic and naturalists who were despicable; naturalists who were centuries ahead of their times and naturalists stubbornly stuck in the past; naturalists who had every privilege and naturalists who struggled even to feed themselves, let alone to do science.  But no naturalist I’ve encountered was as extraordinarily unlucky as Ambroise Marie François Joseph Palisot, Baron de Beauvois.