Lucas Blogs About Books

I could have waited until evening to take this photo, but I didn't. So, what's this book's deal? This is the first entry in Abby Howard's young reader paleontology comic series Earth Before Us, it's called Dinosaur Empire . Wait a minute, is this one of those books that tricks kids into learning by presenting educational material with a loose narrative? Yep! It follows Ronnie, an elementary school student who recently received a zero on her dinosaur quiz and is freaking out about her future academic prospects. This attracts the attention of her neighbor, Miss Lernin, who is hanging out in a recycling bin for reasons that are "not important." In any case, Miss Lernin uses science magic to take Ronnie back in time to the Mesozoic era so that she can learn all about dinosaurs and ace her make-up quiz. So . . . it's kinda like The Magic School Bus ? Yeah, but without Lily Tomlin. You know that The Magic School Bus  was a serie...

So, what's this book's deal? You know how rad dinosaurs are, right? Uh, they're only the raddest! This is a book about that. . . well, really about how Dinosaurs evolved in Triassic Period, came to dominate multiple biomes in the Jurassic, and went extinct in the Late Cretaceous. It's written by Steve Brusatte, a paleontologist with a specialty on Theropod dinosaurs, which you may know as the forebears of modern birds (or, more accurately, avian dinosaurs). Rad! Yeah, it's rad. And you know what's really rad?   What's really rad? The fact that advancements in science mean that we know a lot more about dinosaurs now than we did when I was a kid. For example? Well, I should say that advancements in science and recent discoveries mean that paleontologists can say things like, "Dinosaurs had feathers for a long time before birds evolved flight," or "Tyrannosaurs may have possessed chimpanzee-like intelligence." Two thin...

Drunken monkeys? Tell me more. So, what's this book's deal? Well, do you remember Robert Evans from cracked.com ? He's the guy who did stuff like go into active war zones to talk to people about their experiences ? Yes, yes he did. He's not with Cracked anymore, but when he was he wrote a book called A Brief History of Vice: How Bad Behavior Built Civilization. How would you describe the genre? Oh, um, I guess this is loosely, a popular science book, although it does also have a lot of stuff about history and sociology, so maybe it's more of a hodgepodge. It's maybe more of a collection of essays exploring various things that are considered vices in modern society: drugs, prostitution, and being an asshole. It doesn't necessarily advocate for or against any of those things, Evans is more interested in exploring the ways in which these behaviors (and society's reaction to them) has shaped our modern world. He also includes instructions fo...

This book cover brought to you by Wes Anderson. So, what's this book's deal? Well, since you asked, Improbable Destinies: Fate, Chance, and the Future of Evolution examines experiments in evolutionary biology meant to test whether evolution is the random, non-repeatable result of every selection pressure that's ever acted upon a species or whether it is limited to the possibilities present in an organism's genome, meaning it can be predicted and will inevitably give rise to to the same convergent phenotypes. You're not expecting me to roll out the "English, please," cliche, are you? No. Anyway, this is a popular science book about evolutionary biology by Jonathan B. Losos, a herpetologist who has conducted evolutionary studies on anole lizards in the Caribbean. Specifically, to test the hypothesis that ground-based predation pressure will lead to natural selection for shorter legs in order for increased climbing stability on thin branches (I m...