Northeastern Naturalist B1 Noteworthy Books 2015 Vol. 22, No. 4 Dragonflies: Magnificent Creatures of Water, Air, and Land. Pieter van Dokkum. 2015. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT. 184 pp., $37.50, hardcover, ISBN 9780300197082. Almost without our noticing, dragonflies dart through our world, flying, seeing, hunting, mating. Their lives are as mysterious as their gossamer wings are beautiful. In this book, Pieter van Dokkum reveals many of the dragonfly’s secrets, capturing the stages of this striking insect’s life cycle in unprecedented close-up photographs. He documents scenes of dragonfly activity seldom witnessed and rarely photographed. Dragonflies: Magnificent Creatures of Water, Air, and Land begins on a moonlit summer night, when an alien-looking larva crawls out of the water and transforms into a fully formed dragonfly. In the following chapters we witness dew-covered dragonflies sparkling in the morning sun, then a pair of mating dragonflies moving through the air in a twelve-legged, eightwinged dance. In the final chapter, one generation dies as the next prepares to leave the water and begin its own winged journey. Each stage is documented through van Dokkum’s inquisitive lens and accompanied by information on various species of dragonflies and damselflies, their metamorphosis, and their ecological importance as insect predators.. The Amazing World of Flyingfish. Steve N.G. Howell. 2014. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ. 64 pp., $11.71, hardcover, ISBN 9780691160115. If you travel the open ocean anywhere in the tropics, you are very likely to see flyingfish. These beautifully colored “ocean butterflies” shoot out of the water and sail on majestic, winglike pectoral fins to escape from predators such as dolphins, swordfish, and tuna. Some can travel for more than six hundred feet per flight. Yet despite their prevalence in warm ocean waters and their vital role in the tropical food chain, surprisingly little is known about flyingfish—more than 60 species are said to exist, but nobody is sure of the number. This beautifully illustrated book presents flyingfish as you've never seen them before. It features more than 90 stunning color photos by renowned naturalist Steve Howell, as well as a concise and accessible text that explores the natural history of flyingfish, where they can be found, how and why they fly, what colors they are, what they eat and what eats them, and more. The ideal gift for fish lovers, seasoned travelers, and armchair naturalists alike, this first-of-its-kind book provides a rare and incomparable look at these spectacular marine creatures.. The Narrow Edge: A Tiny Bird, an Ancient Crab, and an Epic Journey. Deborah Cramer. 2015. Year. University of Yale Press, New Haven, CT. 288 pp. $21.38, hardcover, ISBN 9780300185195. Each year, Red Knots, sandpipers weighing no more than a coffee cup, fly a nearmiraculous 19,000 miles from the tip of South America to their nesting grounds in the Arctic and back. Along the way, they double their weight by gorging on millions of tiny horseshoe crab eggs. Horseshoe Crabs, ancient animals that come ashore but once a year, are vital to humans, too: their blue blood safeguards our health. Now, the Rufa Red Knot, newly listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, will likely face extinction in the foreseeable future across its entire range, 40 states and 27 countries. The first United States bird listed because global warming imperils its existence, it will not be the last: the Red Knot is the twenty-first century’s “canary in the coal mine”. Logging thousands of miles following the knots, shivering with the birds out on the snowy tundra, tracking them down in bug-infested marshes, Cramer vividly portrays what’s at stake for millions of shorebirds and hundreds of millions of people living at the sea edge. The Narrow Edge offers an uplifting portrait of the tenacity of tiny birds and of the many people who, on the sea edge we all share, keep knots flying and offer them safe harbor. Living a Land Ethic: A History of Cooperative Conservation on the Leopold Memorial Reserve. Stephen A. Laubach. 2014. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, WI. 156 pp. $19.95, softcover, ISBN 9780299298746. In 1935, in the midst of relentless drought, Aldo Leopold purchased an abandoned farm along the Wisconsin River near Baraboo, Wisconsin. An old chicken coop, later to become famous as the Leopold “Shack”, was the property’s only intact structure. The Leopold family embraced this spent farm as a new kind of laboratory—a place to experiment on restoring health to an ailing piece of land. Here, Leopold found inspiration for writing A Sand County Almanac, his influential book of essays on conservation and ethics. Living a Land Ethic chronicles the formation of the 1600-acre reserve surrounding the Shack. When the Leopold Memorial Reserve was founded in 1967, Noteworthy Books Received by the Northeastern Naturalist, Issue 22/4, 2015 Northeastern Naturalist Noteworthy Books 2015 Vol. 22, No. 4 B2 The Northeastern Naturalist welcomes submissions of review copies of books that publishers or authors would like to recommend to the journal’s readership and are relevant to the journal’s mission of publishing information about the natural history of the northeastern US. Accompanying short, descriptive summaries of the text are also welcome. five neighboring families signed an innovative agreement to jointly care for their properties in ways that honored Aldo Leopold’s legacy. In the ensuing years, the Reserve’s Coleman and Leopold families formed the Sand County Foundation and the Aldo Leopold Foundation. These organizations have been the primary stewards of the Reserve, carrying on a tradition of ecological restoration and cooperative conservation. Author Stephen A. Laubach draws from the archives of both foundations, including articles of incorporation, correspondence, photos, managers’ notes, and interviews to share with readers the Reserve’s untold history and its important place in the American conservation movement. Second Nature: An Environmental History of New England. William Boyd. 2015. The Johns Hopkins UniverRichard W. Judd. 2014. University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst, MA. 328 pp., $24.95, softcover, ISBN 9781625340665. Bounded by the St. Lawrence Valley to the north, Lake Champlain to the west, and the Gulf of Maine to the east, New England may be the most cohesive region in the United States, with a long and richly recorded history. In this book, Richard W. Judd explores the mix of ecological process and human activity that shaped that history over the past 12,000 years. He traces a succession of cultures through New England’s changing postglacial environment down to the 1600s, when the arrival of Europeans interrupted this coevolution of nature and culture. A long period of tension and warfare, inflected by a variety of environmental problems, opened the way for frontier expansion. This in turn culminated in a unique landscape of forest, farm, and village that has become the embodiment of what Judd calls “second nature”— culturally modified landscapes that have superseded a more pristine “first nature”. In the early 1800s changes in farm production and industrial process transformed central New England, while burgeoning markets at the geographical margins brought rapid expansion in fishing and logging activities. Although industrialization and urbanization severed connections to the natural world, the dominant cultural expression of the age, Romanticism, provided new ways of appreciating nature in the White Mountains and Maine woods. Spurred by these Romantic images and by a long tradition of local resource management, New England gained an early start in rural and urban conservation. In the 1970s environmentalists, inspired by a widespread appreciation for regional second-nature landscapes, moved quickly from battling pollution and preserving wild lands to sheltering farms, villages, and woodlands from intrusive development. These campaigns, uniquely suited to the region’s land-use history, ecology, and culture, were a fitting capstone to the environmental history of New England. Venerable Trees: History, Biology, and Conservation in the Bluegrass. Tom Kimmerer. 2015. University Press of Kentucy, Lexington, KY. 280 pp., $39.95, hardcover, ISBN 9780813165660. When the first settlers arrived in the Bluegrass region of Kentucky, they found an astonishing landscape of open woodland grazed by vast herds of bison. Farmers quickly replaced the bison with cattle, sheep, and horses, but left many of the trees to shade their pastures. Today, central Kentucky and central Tennessee still boast one of the largest populations of presettlement trees in the nation, found in both rural and urban areas. In Venerable Trees: History, Biology, and Conservation in the Bluegrass, Tom Kimmerer showcases the beauty, age, size, and splendor of these ancient trees and the remaining woodland pastures. Documenting the distinctive settlement history that allowed for their preservation, Kimmerer explains the biology of Bluegrass trees and explores the reasons why they are now in danger. He also reveals the dedication and creativity of those fighting to conserve these remarkable three-hundred- to five-hundred-year-old plants— from innovative, conscientious developers who build around them rather than clearing the land to farmers who use lightning rods to protect them from natural disasters. Featuring more than 100 color photographs, this beautifully illustrated book offers guidelines for conserving ancient trees worldwide while educating readers about their life cycle. Venerable Trees is an informative call to understand the challenges faced by the companions so deeply rooted in the region’s heritage and a passionate plea for their preservation.