Category: Reviews by Bill Smith

The Map that Changed the World: William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology, by Simon Winchester

Few branches of science are so closely attributable to a single originator as geology.  Simon Winchester gives us a brisk walk through the life of William Smith as his observations of the English countryside grew from surveying for coal mining, canal building and agricultural drainage to a full mapping of its surface and subsurface geologic structures. 

The life story includes Smith’s humble beginnings and emphasizes how his lack of social standing, despite his competence in his surveying work, hindered acceptance of his scientific work.  He tried to offset this status by living above his means, with consequent times of financial failure and debtors prison. 

Recognition of his scientific work follows a similar arc.  Smith came to a sweeping understanding of the sedimentary layers of coal, limestone, chalk, and other soil and mineral formations that he observed in regular bands across England.  This understanding was enhanced by the correlation of fossils associated with different layers.  The consistent tilt of these layers also allowed him to predict their appearance underground.  This understanding was of obvious commercial value to the mining industry at that time and since to petroleum and other industries.  Smith finally compiled his observations in his “Map of the Strata of England and Wales,” which sold well, though Smith’s lack of social standing meant that the economic value of his work went largely to others.  Intellectual recognition of the originality of Smith’s work, and its importance to understanding the formation of the earth and the evolution of life, was contested for years.  Eventual recognition of Smith’s creative role in forming the science of geology came later in his life, giving a happy ending to the story.

Winchester’s telling of the story is quintessentially British in style.  He wields arcane vocabulary and scientific terminology in intricate sentences that are at times charming and at sometimes just dense.  Winchester makes scientific concepts understandable to readers willing to do some work, or skippable without losing the flow.  There are a number of helpful illustrations, but a shortage of maps of Smith’s whirlwind travels throughout England that would orient readers who don’t know that geography.  This book opened a new area of knowledge for most of our group, though some of us had touched bits of its subject matter.  It provided wonderful discussion material for our group.  We explored imprisonment for debt, how Smith avoided conflict with literal interpretations of biblical creation stories, the shift of thought during the unfolding of the age of reason and the industrial revolution and the individual genius of finding unique significance from observations seen by millions. 

— Bill Smith

The Silk Roads: A New History of the World, by Peter Frankopan

Peter Frankopan, an Oxford historian, sweeps us through the last 2,000 years of world history, showing us how it looks from an Asian perspective rather than from the European perspective that dominates our educational experiences. He posits that the Middle East, Central Asia, call it what we will, is the focal point of the world’s trade in ideas, commerce and wealth. For most of these 2,000 years, Europe was a backwater, not the driving force we imagine. He gives us example after example of how European events reacted to events in Asia — from the crusades to colonization of the Americas, the industrial revolution, and the world ward of the 20th Century.

Frankopan’s perspective intensifies as he nears the present; forty percent of the text deals with the period from World War I to the present. As we were reading this book during the final days of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, the immediacy of Western cluelessness about this part of the world was poignant. If only Frankopan’s broader worldview had been a part of our foreign policy considerations over the last century!

This book is a long, hard read. At over 500 pages thick with unfamiliar names and places, it feels encyclopedic. Most of us felt the effort was rewarded with a new outlook on world affairs and international relationships. It is the textbook to the world history course we wish we had taken. For those looking for the Cliff Notes version, two related books are available. Frankopan has published The Silk Roads, and Illustrated New History of the World (2018), aimed at young adult readers and found in the children’s section of our library. It was a welcome companion for several of us. Another member was sent Frankopan’s The New Silk Roads: The Present and Future of the World (2019), which extends his discussion into the world he sees unfolding in Asia today. We have added it to our list of possible future books.

— Bill Smith

The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession and the Natural History Heist of the Century, by Kirk Wallace Johnson

Is this book autobiography?  Memoir?  Is it the story of a quest for the answers to an absorbing crime story with an uncertain ending?  Is it scientific history?  Answer: All of the above!  In weaving together these several strands, this non-fiction tale led to provocative discussion. 

Kirk Wallace Johnson opens his tale autobiographically:  He’s suffering from PTSD in the aftermath of the war in Iraq.  His current work, seeking to resettle Iraqi interpreters in the US, meets with limited success and constant frustration.  To relieve his depression, he takes up fly-fishing.  From his guide, he learns about fly-tying, the creation of beautiful works of art that are ostensibly for use as hooks to attract salmon.  In reality, these salmon flies are almost never actually used to fish.  They are bought and sold and hoarded as the works of art they are.  Trouble is, however, that the “best” require the use of rare and expensive bird feathers, many from extinct or near-extinct birds. 

As the author enters the world of the fly-tiers, he starts to hear of a theft from the British Museum’s ornithological collection held at the Tring Museum outside London.  This theft was accomplished by a young man, barely out of his teens, named Edwin Rist.  To explain not only the lure of the beautiful bird feathers that drew Rist to the heist, but also the scientific value of the birds taken, the author discovers the work of naturalist Alfred Russell Wallace, who in the middle years of the 19th century, traversed the Malay Archipelago where he gathered and catalogued over 125,000 specimens of rare birds.  His meticulous efforts to tag the date and location of each skin, as the bird carcasses are called, led him independently from Charles Darwin to arrive at the theory of evolution via natural selection.  

But what of Edwin Rist?  Rist is an American young man studying flute at the Royal Conservatory in London, hoping to be selected to play with a major European orchestra when his studies are completed.  He is also an up-and-coming expert fly-tier, featured in the fly-tying world’s website as “the future of fly-tying.”  He needs money to purchase the exotic bird feathers to use in tying his flies.  His visit to the Tring museum awakens him to the possibilities of securing a supply of rare feathers for his own fly-tying and of a steady source of income from feather sales to other fly-tiers.  

The subtitle speaks of obsession and there are many to examine in this book.  There is, first, the scientific obsession of Alfred Russell Wallace, the collector of the specimens, who from his lower-class origins sought academic recognition that was at the time only granted to upper class Britons.  There is Edwin Rist’s obsession with tying classic fishing flies that motivates the theft.  And there is the author’s own obsession with the crime and with recovering feathers for the museum, an obsession that has therapeutic value in alleviating his PTSD symptoms.   

Fly-tying with exotic feathers has exerted an obsessive pull on anglers and on pure hobbyists, with an upsurge of interest in the late 20th century.  With that enthusiasm comes the obsessions that fuel an underground market in rare and often illegal feathers.  Edwin Rist fell into this obsession as a young teenager.  He was later arrested and tried for the theft, was found guilty but lightly punished with a short period of probation after pleading incapacity due to Asperger’s syndrome.  

Many of our discussions were prompted by the judicial treatment of the case.  Could the system do justice to all the interests of society?  The police were essentially done when Rist was identified and tried.  The prosecutor and judge felt limited by prior decisions on the Asperger defense.  The museum’s interest waned when the specimens that were recovered were missing their sourcing tags or had been cut into marketable parts.  The general silence of the “feather underground” made it more difficult to track the fate of the specimens.  What do we think should have been a just punishment or a restorative action imposed on Edwin Rist?  And could he have pulled this off alone?  

Where does the value of the specimens to the scientific community collide with the value of the birds as objects of true beauty that the public might want to see?  Fly-tiers ask:  “Why does the Museum need so many examples of the same bird anyway?”

The Feather Thief is a good read, provocatively posing questions to which different readers might well derive different answers.

— Jeanie and Bill Smith