51¶¯Âþ

Viking’s edition af Naturalist (Island in the US, £20/$24.95, ISBN 0 713 99141 0), Edward Wilson’s autobiography, appears this week in Britain. In February, our reviewer described the American edition as “beautifully written, though wildly uneven as an autobiography”. Wilson concentrates on the strands of his life that led him to devote it to the study of ants, a decision he reached at the age of 10. This is the story of how he did so, first in field work from Cuba to New Guinea, then taking in broader issues from the controversy over sociobiology to Wilson’s defence of ecology and traditional biology at Harvard University in the face of ferocious opposition from molecular biologists such as James Watson. The tale is fascinating and wonderfully told. Definitely worth a read.