Our final Darwin Day Q&A is with John Kricher, author of Galapagos: A Natural History. This book is a must-read for anyone curious about the flora and fauna Darwin might have encountered in his expedition to the Galapagos. Here, John discusses his favorite Galapagos species and the ecological changes the islands have undergone since Darwin’s visit. Oh, and did I mention the photographs? John has kindly provided photographs of two native species including perhaps the most famous of all — the giant tortoise.

Princeton Global Science: Your book Galapagos: A Natural History describes many of the flora and fauna of the Islands. What are some of your favorite species? Do you have any photographs or illustrations you could share?

John Kricher: As an ornithologist I obviously like birds and the Darwin’s finches and various seabirds of the Galapagos are real favorites. I very much enjoy visiting the waved albatross colony, for example. Plus the fact that where else is it possible to observe penguins and flamingos in close proximity to one another? Answer, no where else. And, of course, I very much like the reptiles of the Galapagos, the giant tortoises and the marine and land iguanas.

More after the jump.

To celebrate Darwin Day, we are interviewing our Darwinian authors. Earlier I posted a Q&A with David Reznick focused more on Darwin as author. Here we speak with Thalia Grant and Greg Estes, authors of Darwin in Galápagos: Footsteps to a New World about Darwin as an explorer. Thalia and Greg are in the unique position of having retraced, step-by-step, Darwin’s expedition to the Galapagos. Here they speak about the challenges they faced in following in Darwin’s footsteps and also the insights they gained from the experience. Hover over the images to read descriptive captions. You might also enjoy reading this excerpt from their book.

Thalia Grant & Greg Estes: Greg and I came up with the idea to retrace Darwin’s footsteps through Galápagos after discovering that although it was known which 4 islands Darwin visited in Galápagos; it was not clear where on these islands he explored. In order to determine Darwin’s movements through the archipelago, we needed to examine his written works.

We traveled to England to immerse ourselves in archival research; to examine Darwin’s writings, and most importantly his original notes and manuscripts. Today all of Darwin’s works can be found on Darwin Online, but at that time his notes and manuscripts were buried deep within the Darwin archive of Cambridge University Library. There we unearthed, among other gems, a full volume of untranscribed geological notes that contained important clues to where Darwin had explored in Galápagos. At other repositories in England we found the log of HMS Beagle, and Captain FitzRoy’s charts of the archipelago, which showed the Beagle’s routes and bearings.

We then returned to Galápagos with all we had learned and embarked on our expedition. Some of the places Darwin explored were easy to pinpoint, others challenging. Some were found by trial and error, by going to places that sounded right in terms of the ship’s general anchorage, and when not finding the formations Darwin described, having to re-examine the clues and the coast line repeatedly until we got it right. It helped that both of us knew the Galápagos intimately from having spent years conducting ecological research on various islands and, in Greg’s case, leading natural history tours through the archipelago.

Continues after the jump.

To celebrate Darwin Day, we are interviewing our Darwinian authors. First up is David Reznick who is the author of The Origin Then and Now: An Interpretive Guide to the Origin of Species. Of the book, SEED Magazine wrote, “Reznick . . . succeeds where others have failed–instead of annotating the dense, Victorian prose of the Origin or recasting it as a popular narrative, he paraphrases each chapter of the book, adding fascinating elaborations on why Darwin chose a certain phrase, where he turned out to be wrong, and how the intervening 150 years have changed our theories. His account is a welcome tool for those who’d like to hear evolution from Darwin himself but find the master impenetrable.” In this brief interview, Reznick talks about the initial response to On the Origin of the Species and why it continues to be such an important book. He also has a few suggestions for how to celebrate Darwin Day this year. If you are in Calgary, David will present the 26th Annual Darwin Lecture tonight.

Princeton Global Science: You make the point that in spite of being one of the most important books ever written and being cited thousands of times, The Origin of the Species is a rather difficult book to read, right?

David Reznick: Yes. Also, it is cited far more often than it is read, I think. The difficulty lies in part in its being rooted in the science of 1859, so some of the ways he presents things are foreign. A second reason is that he had a much broader command of science than most people do today, so he skips lightly from geology to paleontology to comparative embryology to anatomy, etc.

More available after the jump.

“A Novel of Deception, Power, and Internet Intrigue” reads the subtitle to The Silicon Jungle, the latest work of senior staff research scientist at Google, Shumeet Baluja. Praised as being both “[a] cerebral, cautionary tale… credible and scary” as well as “[c]lever and prophetic,” this novel unravels a thrilling tale about a naive intern, granted unfettered access to people’s most private thoughts and actions. Undoubtedly, the novel raises serious ethical questions about technological advancements, and the growing availability to use online activity for private, political and personal gain.

The book’s cover, with its almost sinister, seemingly unidentifiable face mounted in an explosion of words, is effectively eye-catching and raises questions about the book’s content. After talking to the book’s cover designer, Lorraine Doneker, it became clear that there was meaning hiding between the lines of text and lurking in the gaps of this ominous image. The hint of mystery evoked by the book’s cover begs the reader to unlock the meaning breathing within the content –provoked by the words “deception,” “power” and “intrigue.” These ideas prompted us to ask Lorraine a few questions about the thought and work that went into the cover design of The Silicon Jungle. Click “continued” to keep reading.

We enjoyed a nice long break for the New Year, but we’re happy to present Issue 9 of Princeton Global Science. Richard Crossley, author of The Crossley ID Guide, explains in two videos how you can make your backyard more bird-friendly by incorporating bird baths and bird feeders (Check out the gorgeous birds in this [...]

Dr. Francesco Duina of Bates College recently provided a brief 90-second explanation of his book, Winning: Reflections on an American Obsession on WAMC’s Academic Minute. During the segment, Duina explains the argument and relevance of Winning and explores why the U.S. is consistently outranked on lists of the world’s happiest countries. Whew – that’s a lot for just 90 seconds!

Click here to listen, and here to learn more about the book!

You’ve seen the Vanity Fair version on the last page of each issue, the one adapted from Proust and given to celebrities to answer. Now check out Dorothy King’s blog where 2009 National Book Award Finalist and POISON KING author Adrienne Mayor channels her subject and unlocks the key to the Man, the Mith, the Legend.

“The gift of nature that I would like to have is: I am already blessed by Nature, with a magnificent physique and superb athletic prowess!”

Nice timing leading up to the April paperback release but hey, Mithradates? Would a little bit of modesty kill you?

Then again, this royal coinage shows off some luscious locks so maybe Nature really did spend a little more time crafting the king…

Tom Gresham at the VCU News Center posted this excellent and inspiring interview with Kathleen Graber earlier this week. The National Book Award finalist talks about how she decided to become a poet, contemporary poetry, and her interesting writing process for her latest collection, The Eternal City (hint: it involved her garage and the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius).

Watch the entire video and read Tom Gresham’s feature here.

Paul Hond at Columbia Magazine recently sat down with 2010-2011 White House Fellow Jason Dempsey to talk about service, policy, pugilism, and his new Princeton title, Our Army: Soldiers, Politics, and American Civil-Military Relations. You can read the entire feature at the magazine’s site, including the story behind Dempsey’s eye-opening 2004 Citizenship and Service Survey and research featured in his book:

Dempsey first thought of doing a survey in early 2002, as a Columbia PhD candidate in search of a dissertation topic. With the nation engulfed in 9/11 patriotism, fear, and paranoia, and soldiers on the ground in Afghanistan, the military was at the center of the national debate. “I started thinking that a study of social attitudes in the Army was needed, because there was a perception that the Army was overwhelmingly Republican, that we were hyperpolitical and voting at astronomical rates. So I said, ‘Well, here’s an opportunity,’ and really what I mean is an obligation. I was in a special position. I was given the tools by Columbia and by the Army to look at something that was central to the military’s relationship with society.”

Working under professor Robert Shapiro of the political science department, Dempsey navigated the Army bureaucracy to gain access to the airtight Army database, from which he drew his pool of respondents. His own experience on military bases told him that politics didn’t come up much in day-to-day Army business, and that election days weren’t the Super Bowl. “Come an election, you might be out training, or in the field, nowhere near a polling place, and nobody would blink an eye,” he says. “The idea that the Army was voting at high rates simply wasn’t accurate.”

Molly Greene has been interviewed on FiveBooks on the 17th Century Mediterranean

Ziba Mir-Hosseini, well-known Islamic feminist and author of Islam and Gender: The Religious Debate in Contemporary Iran, recently participated in a question-and-answer session with Yoginder Sikand. Here is an excerpt from the interview:

In recent years, a number of Muslim women’s groups have emerged across the world, struggling for gender equality and justice using Islamic arguments. Most of them are led by women who come from elitist or, at least middle class, backgrounds. Many of them seem to lack a strong popular base. How do you account for this?

Ziba Mir-Hosseini: I think the majority of the women who are writing and publishing about what is popularly called ‘Islamic feminism’ are definitely from the elite or the middle class… I believe that Islamic feminism is, in a sense, the unwanted child of ‘political Islam’. It was ‘political Islam’ that actually politicized the whole issue of gender and Muslim women’s rights. The slogan “back to the shariah” so forcefully pressed by advocates of political Islam in practice meant seeking to return to the classical texts on fiqh, or Muslim jurisprudence, and doing away with various laws advantageous to women that had no sanction in the Islamists’ literalist understanding of Islam.

Click here to read the rest of Ziba Mir-Hosseini and Yoginder Sikand’s conversation.