Review by Booklist Review
No disrespect to Hank Pym, Marvel Comics' shrinking scientist and Avenger, but the real "Ant-Man" is Edward O. Wilson, the world's preeminent myrmecologist (expert on ants) and conservationist superhero. Esteemed biographer and historian Rhodes warmly portrays Wilson as an ambitious and accomplished biologist, a passionate and influential advocate for identifying all life forms and preserving half of Earth as natural habitat, and a prolific, Pulitzer Prize--winning writer. Wilson's difficult childhood (a fishing accident impaired his vision, his father's death by suicide), his becoming a Harvard professor, and his travels around the world studying insects (and suffering innumerable fire-ant stings) are well chronicled. In one of his revolutionary books, Sociobiology (1975), Wilson proposed a biological foundation for social behavior whether the animal is a bug or a human being, and controversy erupted. Rhodes also illuminates Wilson's insights into biodiversity, biophilia, altruism, and the nature of science. The occasional "viciousness" of academia is revealed, but so too are Wilson's frequent and successful collaborations with colleagues. Wilson admits, "Animals and plants I could count on; human relationships were more difficult." His many admirable attributes include a genuine inquisitiveness, sense of wonder, and deep concern for all life, from insects to people, and our planet. Rhodes' biography makes a fine companion to Wilson's Tales from the Ant World (2020).
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Pulitzer--winner Rhodes (The Making of the Atomic Bomb) does justice to "one of the... greatest biologists of the twentieth century" in this brilliant biography. Using interviews with E.O. Wilson and his colleagues, Rhodes balances Wilson's vast professional achievements with a moving portrayal of the arc of his life. Born in Alabama in 1929, Wilson had a challenging childhood, including his parents' divorce and a fishing accident that left him blind in one eye. But he devoted himself to studying the natural world, a pursuit leading him to be the first to spot "the invasion of the pestilential red imported fire ant," during his exploration of a vacant lot at age 13. He studied biology at the University of Tennessee (where he got both his bachelor's and master's degrees in biology in four years), then went on to Harvard for a PhD. Rhodes depicts Wilson as a tireless field scientist at a time when the general belief was that the future of biological discoveries was in the laboratory, and as a proponent who popularized sociobiology, and as a Pulitzer-winner for his books The Ants and On Human Nature. The author leaves no doubt as to Wilson's broad impact on science and the public's perceptions of nature, without ever veering into hagiography. This is a must-read. (Oct.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
An admiring biography of biologist E. O. Wilson, sometimes called "the father of biodiversity" or "the father of sociobiology," based on in-depth research, interviews with Wilson and his colleagues, and Wilson's own writing. Pulitzer Prize winner Rhodes (The Making of the Atomic Bomb) writes that he has long admired Wilson (a fellow Pulitzer winner, and author of On Human Nature and The Ants) for "a quality rare among human beings: he has never stopped growing in knowledge or expanding in range." This biography begins with Wilson's research collecting ant specimens in the South Pacific; Rhodes periodically interrupts his own narrative of Wilson's career to expound on scientific matters. The depth of scientific detail in Rhodes's account might lose some readers, but these explanations are necessary to understanding the significance of Wilson's work and his place in the history of science and conservation. However, this biography only briefly addresses Wilson's racism, sexism, and ties to eugenicist movements. VERDICT A comprehensive account, by an impressive science writer, of one of the world's most influential biologists and his profound contributions.--Elissa Cooper, Helen Plum Memorial Lib., Lombard, IL
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Pulitzer Prize--winning author and historian Rhodes offers a sparkling biography of the eminent, sometimes controversial biologist and naturalist. E.O. Wilson (b. 1929), perhaps the best-known entomologist of the modern era and the discoverer of countless biological and behavioral details on the "social insects," has long worked by a kind of mantra that Rhodes uses in opening: "If a subject is already receiving a great deal of attention…stay away from that subject." Wilson, who learned the rudiments of science as a Boy Scout growing up in an unsettled home in Alabama, always charted his own course, leading to a Harvard scholarship and, soon, an invitation to travel to the South Pacific to study ants for the university's museum. When he did so, Wilson recalls, "only about a dozen scientists around the world were engaged full-time in the study of ants." The number has grown exponentially, in part through Wilson's influence. However, as Rhodes shows in this nimble account, Wilson was not one to sit still. He moved into the more abstract realms of ecology, got into tangles in the 1950s with famed molecular biologist James Watson, and essentially created a new scientific discipline: evolutionary biology and, within it, what is called island biogeography, studying how animals come to inhabit remote islands. As his questions grew larger, so did his answers, leading to trouble. Wilson ran afoul of a sizable chunk of academia when he advanced his theories of "sociobiology," applying ideas of animal ethology to humans, even though he encouraged his colleagues to take a remote view "as though we were zoologists from another planet completing a catalog of social species on Earth." His biggest effort is ongoing, Rhodes writes in closing--namely, the effort to do even more, to catalog every species on Earth so as to document better which have gone extinct. An exemplary portrait that may not win Wilson acolytes but that provides ample evidence for his importance to science. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
