She has grouped the essays into seven major topic areas ranging from adapting to slithering. The categories cover genetic mechanisms DNA uses through mating practices to the ultimate "subject that knows no species boundaries, the cloak with room to cover us all - death." Before arriving at this terminal condition, however, Angier is able to sprinkle petals of flowery prose on prolonging life. In "Why Vegetables Are Good For You," she provides new information on plant chemistry's impact on our bodies. That dread aspect of civilized life, fat, is also given attention - and its due. You will be delighted with her revelations on "adipose pucker."

After a set of paeans celebrating various practicing scientists, Angier finally turns to the "great mystery" - the ending of life. "Cell death is universal to life," she begins. Demonstrating its necessity in allowing evolution to proceed, she proceeds to relate how the process of cell death provides insights in the diagnosis and treatment of various afflictions. In tracking the mechanisms leading to the demise of various cells, particularly within our immune system, reseachers have found new genetic signals that keep our bodies healthy. Otherwise, we would be likely to self-destruct. It's a fine balance kept continually on a fine tightrope. Yet, after aknowledging its necessity, Angier doesn`t accept there's such a thing as "a good way to die." The loss of a friend leads her to express the mechanism of the AIDS
virus and the epidemic's effect on social thinking.

Angier's imaginative essays provide a wealth of topics for further thought, even investigation. It's a pity she failed to provide any supportive reading suggestions. Many of her essays discuss the researchers while omitting to identify them. There's no reason to discount the facts she provides for our enjoyment and edification, but pursuit of a chosen topic is impeded by lack of pointers. That shortcoming is alleviated only by the fact that an index is provided. However, the range of topics and Angier's prose nearly overcome the lack of a bibliography.


Learning to love the cockroach   April 8, 2001
 7 out of 12 found this review helpful

Natalie Angier admits that she had a childhood phobia about roaches; for me it was spiders; I'm sure it's snakes for many others. Angier writes with this recognition; although she still doesn't love roaches, she respects them and is quite able to get us to admire, respect, and appreciate whatever it is in nature that makes our skin crawl. This book is a collection of insightful essays on nature written in her inimitable style. Pure wonder, and humor in all she sees. If nature were a three ring circus (and some of the antics she describes here makes me believe it sometimes is), then she is it's Ringmaster.


A book that made me yelp with joy   August 6, 1998
 38 out of 39 found this review helpful

I am a noisy reader. I groan when I come across clumsy wordings or badly twisted sentences. I sigh when I am bored. I snort when I encounter assertions that are (in my view) outrageous. And occasionally, meeting up with prose that startles me with its elegance, vividness, and originality, I find myself uttering an involuntary yelp of sheer joy. Mind you, this doesn't happen very often. It doesn't happy very often at all when I'm reading pieces about science, and certainly not when the subjects of the pieces are animals such as cockroaches, scorpions, and pit vipers. Yet my passage through The Beauty of the Beastly was punctuated with innumerable such yelps. I couldn't help myself. How else can you respond to a book that describes an orchid this way: "They are the P.T. Barnums of the flower kingdom, dedicated to the premise that there is a sucker born any minute: a sucker, that is, with wings, a thorax, and an unquenchable thirst for nectar and love." Or one i! n which the author says of the lowly dung beetle: "In the vast world of beetles, they have the stamp of nobility, their heads a diadem of horny spikes, their bodies sheathed in glittering mail of bronze or emerald or cobalt blue." Yelp! Yelp! I didn't feel guilty about making such a racket because the author of The Beauty of the Beastly writes so directly and personally to the reader that I suspect she hopes the reader will respond directly and personally as well. I happen to be an animal lover, and probably have more tolerance for insects and reptiles than many people. But I'm convinced that Natalie Angier could coax even my friend with a terrible snake phobia into some fondness for the creatures. Perhaps more to the point, I emerged from the book with new thoughts and a new approach to those things that creep and crawl and jump. "...if there is any lesson I have learned in my years of following science," Angier writes, "it is that nothing is at it! seems. Instead, things are as they seem plus the details y! ou are just beginning to notice." No one, I think, is as good at noticing them as Angier herself.