McCullough's outsized biography of the bridge attempts to capture in one majestic sweep the full glory of the achievement but the story sags mightily in the middle. Like the Atlantic cable and the Suez Canal it was a gigantic embodiment in steel and concrete of the Age of Enterprise. It took 14 years to build and it cost 15 million dollars and the lives of 20 workmen. Part biography, part science report, and part meditation on how the chaos that caused Miller’s existential misery could also bring self-acceptance and a loving wife, this unique book is an ingenious celebration of diversity and the mysterious order that underlies all existence. Miller concludes that Jordan displayed the characteristics of someone who relied on “positive illusions” to rebound from disaster and that his stand on eugenics came from a belief in “a divine hierarchy from bacteria to humans that point…toward better.” Considering recent research that negates biological hierarchies, the author then suggests that Jordan’s beloved taxonomic category-fish-does not exist. Later, he was appointed as the founding president of Stanford, where he evolved into a Machiavellian figure who trampled on colleagues and sang the praises of eugenics. In between this catastrophe and others involving family members’ deaths, he reconstructed his collection. Born into an upstate New York farm family, Jordan attended Cornell and then became an itinerant scholar and field researcher until he landed at Indiana University, where his first ichthyological collection was destroyed by lightning. His perseverance intrigued the author, who also discusses the struggles she underwent after her affair with a woman ended a heterosexual relationship. Gathering up all the fish he could save, Jordan sewed the nameplates that had been on the destroyed jars directly onto the fish. A taxonomist who is credited with discovering “a full fifth of fish known to man in his day,” Jordan had amassed an unparalleled collection of ichthyological specimens. Miller began doing research on David Starr Jordan (1851-1931) to understand how he had managed to carry on after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroyed his work. As with so many other apparent advances, the cure for one disease may well be the cause of another.Īn eye-opening perspective on biology, ecology, and medicine-well worth reading, even if the subject makes you squeamish.Ī Peabody Award–winning NPR science reporter chronicles the life of a turn-of-the-century scientist and how her quest led to significant revelations about the meaning of order, chaos, and her own existence. Scientists speculate that, without parasites to repel, the immune system turns its attention to otherwise minor irritants such as dust mites and cat dander. The biggest surprise: rainforest Indians in Venezuela, commonly infested with intestinal parasites, are almost entirely free of asthma. But to most readers, the real meat of the book will be its description of the ways in which parasites affect the human race. Parasitologists believe that this sort of behavior, making some infected animals 30 times more likely to be eaten, has a profound effect on the balance of predator and prey species in the wild. Many parasites sterilize their prey, diverting energy from reproductive activity to the creation of food for the parasite. Some parasites can modify the behavior of their intermediate hosts, making them more vulnerable to the predators that are their final hosts: Toxoplasma, which passes from rats to cats, turns off a panic mechanism triggered by the smell of cat urine, so the rats no longer instinctively avoid their feline hunters. Living inside another creature’s body requires developing elaborate ways to dodge the immune system, from hiding in cysts to releasing tame viruses that decoy defenses from the actual threat. His subjects range in size from the protozoan Plasmodium (which can fit inside a human red blood cell) to tapeworms, which can grow 60 feet long. Parasites, the stuff of many people’s nightmares, are a biologist’s dream-superbly adapted creatures that have evolved sophisticated strategies for living off their hosts.ĭiscover editor Zimmer ( At the Water’s Edge, 1998) describes the parasites’ lifestyles in vivid detail.
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