Featured Book
Eco Bluff Your Way to Greenism
Paul Sochaczewski (in this book writing as Paul Wachtel) and Jeffrey A. McNeely
Green is the world’s trendiest color. Everybody wants to be seen as caring about the environment, but few people have the time or energy needed to get past rudimentary exclamations about the greenhouse effect or the loss of tropical forests. Eco-Bluff Your Way to Greenism provides quick and painless eco-credibility, providing essential advice on such things as how to deal with people who prefer elephants to human beings, how to establish your street-cred by explaining the PR coup of Chief Seattle (Seathl to you), how to stir up a party by roaring like an eco-guerilla, how to mount a spirited defense of the Mount Graham red squirrel. And next time your golf buddy complains about his slice, you can assure him that a lousy swing is still preferable to the life of the ai, a small South American beetle, which lives – never mind, read the book.
Featured Photos
Featured Articles
Wilderness in Singapore? Who woulda thought?
WILDERNESS IN SINGAPORE? WHO WOULDA THOUGHT? Singapore proved a Coleoptera paradise for Victorian explorer Alfred Russel Wallace; new creatures still emerge BUKIT TIMAH, Singapore Visitors come to Singapore to shop or to learn about other cultures, to close a business deal or attend a conference. A century and a half ago, though, one of Singapore’s […]
News & Events
Intro to a speculative biography of Ali
My speculative biography of Ali, Alfred Russel Wallace’s assistant, was honored as the Best Historical Book of 2024 by the United States Peace Corps Writers. Here’s an excerpt from the book’s introduction. Look Here, Sir, What a Curious Bird Intro to a speculative biography of Ali, Alfred Russel Wallace’s assistant in the Malay Archipelago […]
Alfred Russel Wallace and Things That Go Bump in the Night
Alfred Russel Wallace is best known for his scientific achievements — collecting and documenting hundreds of new species of “natural productions,” major insights into biogeography, island endemism, and cultural anthropology, and notably, his development of a theory of evolution by natural selection independently of and prior to that of Charles Darwin. But Wallace was also […]
Enhancing the Narrative
A historian quickly learns there is little absolute truth. The authors of personal memoirs and observer narratives enhance, misremember (sometimes deliberately), censor, and leave out chunks of information.
Rarely, though, do historians try to go beyond the facts and speculate on the emotions, intentions, and psychological motivations of their research subjects.
As a fun exercise, I’ve created several “imagined conversations” between Alfred Russel Wallace and his assistant Ali, based on tidbits of information and provocative clues found in Wallace’s narratives.