reviews

There's No Place Like Home... Author:  Bernd Heinrich A green sea turtle has a brain no bigger than a walnut. Yet somehow, despite traveling thousands of miles over several years at sea, she’s able to swim back to the beach of her birth when it’s time to mate.  How does she find this one spot over millions of square miles of seemingly endless ocean?  Does she remember key landmarks?  Does she just keep track of where she’s been?  Does she have a map neurologically stamped in her brain?  Blessed with a (slightly) bigger brain, the aptly named wandering albatross does [...]

Get Lost ! Author:  Alastair Bonnett In my backyard are two sturdy metal spikes – buried almost flush with the ground – that mark the two rear corners of my entirely unremarkable quarter acre lot. From an objective viewpoint, the property line created by these markers seems rather arbitrary, but all objectivity flies out the window whenever my clumsy neighbor steps over the line and crushes some of my new garden plantings.  Then the line is grounds for a surprisingly visceral and abiding animosity.  Similar lines define much of modern living.  From neighborhoods to cities, counties, states and countries, the [...]

A Reluctant Emperor... Author:  Robert Graves When a novel is named one of the greatest books of the 20th century, it’s not surprising that its sequel is going to have a hard time measuring up.  So it is with I, Claudius and Claudius the God, a pair of historical novels published in 1934 and 1935 by British poet and classicist Robert Graves that combine to tell the story of Claudius, the fourth emperor of Rome from 41-54 AD.  While the first book tells of Claudius’ life before his ascension to the throne – including all the intrigues of his predecessors, [...]