What do you think?
Rate this book
Wissenschaftler in turbulenten Zeiten
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
January 7, 2019
This wasn’t necessarily a bad book, but it wasn’t what I expected or wanted, either. I really should’ve known going into this that it’s closer to a reference book than a book I would read for fun. Nowak goes through all of the main events and publications in each biologist’s life and how they were impacted by totalitarian regimes, and that’s that. You know that scene from Arrested Development when Michael opens the freezer and sees a bag labeled “DEAD DOVE DO NOT EAT” and opens the bag and finds just that and stares into the middle distance with a defeated “I don’t know what I expected”? That’s how I felt the entire time I was reading this book.
Two quibbles that I had about this book that I actually don’t consider my fault are the style of writing and the subtitle. I know the book literally says “personal reminiscences of ornithologists and other naturalists” on the front, and I know some of the author’s voice could’ve gotten garbled in the translation process, but I felt like there was a bit too much of the his opinion in there for a collection of biographies, and at times he would jump from a list of a scientist’s accomplishments to a personal opinion of them to a description of a research expedition they conducted to an attempt to engagingly describe just how high the stakes were for this particular scientist living in dangerous times, which inevitably fell flat. As for the rest of the subtitle, there were no “other naturalists” to be found in here. I have nothing against ornithologists, and I’m sure ornithology is a great discipline, but the title led me to believe there would be at least some variety in the types of biologists profiled.
Two quibbles that I had about this book that I actually don’t consider my fault are the style of writing and the subtitle. I know the book literally says “personal reminiscences of ornithologists and other naturalists” on the front, and I know some of the author’s voice could’ve gotten garbled in the translation process, but I felt like there was a bit too much of the his opinion in there for a collection of biographies, and at times he would jump from a list of a scientist’s accomplishments to a personal opinion of them to a description of a research expedition they conducted to an attempt to engagingly describe just how high the stakes were for this particular scientist living in dangerous times, which inevitably fell flat. As for the rest of the subtitle, there were no “other naturalists” to be found in here. I have nothing against ornithologists, and I’m sure ornithology is a great discipline, but the title led me to believe there would be at least some variety in the types of biologists profiled.
Displaying 1 of 1 review