Mark Kurlansky's Reading List

"Yes, and it keeps selling. It is one of the most important books written, and I always urge people to read it. The book is more than just the theory of evolution . It’s an exploration of how the entire natural order works. And without understanding how the natural order works, you can’t understand environmental issues or how to solve them. It is disturbing to me how many environmentalists have never read it. It explains the natural order better than anyone else ever has. It addresses biodiversity long before the word was invented, and climate change, and has some fundamental messages that we need to understand, such as the fact that everything that happens changes everything else. It is a starting point for understanding how everything works. Towards the end of the book Darwin says, “There is a grandeur in this view of life.” And there is. It is so magnificent the way it works. Oh, Origin of Species is very readable. It muses on a lot of things, and progresses in the way that a good mind thinks. He will take on a very complicated idea by talking about a very simple observation in a neighbour’s farm. It’s always making the point that things are observable. And Darwin was a wonderful writer. He wrote in a very simple, honest way, talking about the heath in Staffordshire and running across an area where there were fir trees. He very clearly lays things out, and he lets the elegance of the natural order he is talking about shine through. It is the wholeness of his ideas and the completeness of his vision that make it readable."

"I wouldn’t argue with that description. When I was selecting this book it was a bit of a struggle, because I am a big Ed Wilson fan. I have met him and had a fascinating two-hour conversation with him. I have read about 10 books of his, so I had to struggle to choose because there were a number of great candidates. On Human Nature is an absolutely fascinating book, in which a biologist applies the laws of nature to understanding things like the urge for religion and the impulse for altruism. He writes fundamental things about how we work and tries to explore the biology of these things, which are so central to our understanding of human beings but which seldom come up in the field of biology. Wilson has such an interesting mind, and also is a wonderful writer. Actually he is the only writer to have won two general nonfiction Pulitzer prizes. His style is almost poetic. There is a real beauty to the way he writes, and a love of his subject that comes through. I personally have had interesting conversations with him about the impulse to violence. He’s a pacifist – opposed to violence – but he is very misunderstood on this because he also holds the belief that humans are hard-wired for violence. He talks about what he calls the natural fallacy. The natural fallacy is that because something is imprinted in nature, it necessarily means that that’s the way things ought to be. Like Wilson, I couldn’t disagree more. If you followed the natural fallacy logically, we shouldn’t even wear clothes because that’s not in nature. Wilson says that we have to evolve our thinking about violence, that we can’t afford it – especially with the weapons we have. He’s an ant expert, and he says that if ants had nuclear weapons, the world would last two seconds. So because humans do have nuclear weapons, we can’t be thinking like ants."

"This is a wonderful book. It is about the whale, and everything about the whale – its history, its myth and its science. Whales are huge and compelling, and Philip Hoare’s excitement about them comes through. It is also a very handsome book and very nicely illustrated. Everyone talks about what the future of books will be because of electronics, and I have this theory that the future of books is beautiful books. Books that you would want to look at and touch and own. This is that sort of book. We learn a lot about their lives but we also learn about the lore of whales – why they have always been important to us, and what throughout history has been thought about them. The crowning example is Moby Dick , which inspired Hoare to write his book. Moby Dick was in many ways about a mythological version of whales. As Melville intended, it tells us more about us than it does about the whale. It’s about hysteria really – concepts of evil and our hysterical reactions to them. Whales are the largest animal, as far as we know, to have ever been on earth, which is itself fascinating. They’re just so huge. They communicate, I shouldn’t say verbally but auditorily, through sound. We don’t really know what these sounds are. Maybe they are words. But it’s clear that they make sounds and the sounds are communications, telling other whales information. Yes. I think in many ways his style is similar to mine, because he comes at things in so many different ways. I may have influenced him, I don’t know! I get sent books all the time that I am supposed to like because they are sort of like my books. But this one I actually did like. He covers so many different fields. It has a sense of science, but also of literature."

"This is the autobiographical story of a woman who gets ill with a mysterious virus that totally incapacitates her for years. Somebody brings her a violet in a pot which has a snail on it, and she becomes fascinated with this snail. And she starts to learn everything about snails, which are not what you would have as the usual household pet. It is an engaging story of snails, which is surprising. This is also an example of a book that you would want to have in your library, because it is such a handsome book and nicely illustrated. It is a beautiful little book which is written with a real gentleness and is very enjoyable to read. By starting with something so small and seemingly so simple, it gives you this great understanding. Darwin made the point that the beauty of evolution is that so much springs from things that are so simple. Yes, and then at the end she releases them into the wild. Most of us certainly don’t watch snails that closely. However there was a big storm this summer, and after the storm my 11-year-old daughter discovered all these snails on her door stoop, and she became fascinated with them. I haven’t told her anything about this book but perhaps she should read it."

"I love this book. In more years than I want to add up of journalism, I have talked to people in every walk of life imaginable – movie stars and athletes and politicians. I find that the most interesting people to talk to are scientists, but the problem is that they are often not that articulate, and difficult to understand. So when you get a scientist who can explain things clearly it is a real opportunity. Brian Greene writes well, and he explains things clearly in plain English. The book is about string theory , but not exclusively. It’s really about what’s been going on in physics since Einstein , and also does a great job of explaining Einstein. He makes quantum physics and Einstein’s theory of relativity really make sense, so you can understand something which nobody seems to understand (the big discovery was that the speed of light never changes). Quantum physics is almost 100 years old and we still talk about it as something new and incomprehensible. By writing in accessible language, and explaining things in a very clear step-by-step way. It is kind of what I did in World Without Fish , where I was writing for children and I covered fishery issues which nobody understands, because they speak in a weird language. So I used normal language, I explained things step-by-step, and what I found is that adults have been reading my book too, because they also need that explanation. That is what Greene did with physics. We all know that people like Einstein and Niels Bohr were geniuses, but he explains why . He also manages to capture the excitement of re-thinking the universe. Fundamentally, what you need to do clearly in both fiction and non-fiction is convey a passion and tell a story. I would love to leave science writing to the scientists. When scientists can write – like Brian Greene – it’s wonderful. There’s nothing better. But the truth is that most scientists can’t write. So somebody else had better do it."