Kenny Salwey's Tales of a River Rat: Adventures Along the Wild Mississippi Book

3.5 - Edward O. Wilson is a famed Harvard scientist and winner of the Pulitzer Prize twice for general nonfiction, the first time in 1979 for 'On Human Nature' and the second in 1991 for 'The Ants.' I knew of Wilson because of my reading on environmental and conservation topics where I've come across numerous of his quotes. There is of necessity a lot of science in a memoir about the life of a scientist. Some of it was beyond me, but much of it was accessible, and I was interested in most of it, which can carry you through a lot of knotty pages. I traveled between an audiobook and an ebook and I blame the parts that I didn't find as engaging on the fact that my mind wanders more when I'm listening than it does when I'm reading. Wilson has a unique writer's voice that paints extraordinary pictures of wildlife and nature, the lives of ants, and the lives of men as they conjure for a place in academia. Throughout his entire life, he retained the curiosity and wonder of the boy who roamed Paradise Beach in Florida as well as the woodlands and rivers around Mobile, Alabama.

When his parents divorced, he had a lovely grandmotherly type to watch over him, Mother Raub. At her home, he learned about the living world of plants from her "small botanic garden of ornamental plants." Shy, introverted, and small framed, his interest in nature and wildlife suited him. He writes, "A nomadic existence made Nature my companion of choice, because the outdoors was the one part of my world I perceived to hold rock steady." He's the little boy with a jar of ants under his bed; he's also the one carrying a snake through your backyard. I found it all fascinating because he grew up to give so much science to the world, all while doing work that suited him and that he loved.

One chapter is called 'A Magic Kingdom.' No, it's not Disney World. For Wilson, it's much more optimal. When he lived with his father in Washington, D.C., they lived "within walking distance of the National Zoo and a five-cent streetcar ride to the National Museum of Natural History." He writes, "Here I was in 1939, a little kids, nine years old, tuned to any new experience so long as it had something to do with natural history, with a world-class zoo on one side and a world-class museum on the other, both free of charge and open seven days a week." This was beyond any magical expectation Wilson could have contrived for himself as a boy.

One aspect of Wilson's life at Harvard that was of interest to me was that he considered James Dewey Watson of 'Watson and Crick' fame, an "adverse hero," or as he puts it one of his "brilliant enemies," without whom he may not have worked so hard. A man of "bad manners" Watson was brusque and off-putting, often disdaining other scientists. When Wilson puts forward the argument that the department could use more ecologists, Watson's reply is, "Anyone who would hire an ecologist is out of their mind." This is the beginning of what Wilson termed "the molecular wars." Wilson genuinely admired Watson and his work, although Watson's attitude provoked and irked him. Watson seems to have admired no-one but his fellows in like-minded science. There is some sly humor in Wilson's statement that the molecular and cellular biologists, "seemed to be multiplying like the E.col and other microorganisms on which their finest work had come to be based."

I also found the science related to the study of altruism as a factor in kinship genetics interesting. Perhaps I will finally read Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, with some small idea of what it is talking about. Wilson's studies led him to the science of biodiversity, which is perhaps one of the most critical sciences of our time. I hope to read more by this author.