Richard Ellis (1) (1938–)

For someone who is really interested in whales, marine biology, or the subject of whaling, this book is an excellent choice for you to read. If those subjects aren't really something you care about, then I'd suggest you pass this one by.
Richard Ellis goes into intense depth and detail on the subject of sperm whales, their history in whaling, and how little we actually know about them. It was actually quite an inspiring book, and also extremely frustrating. I myself grew quite unsettled and angered about how many whales humans actually continued to kill, after we definitely knew better and had an idea about the scale of destruction we had already caused to an amazing, irreplaceable order of creatures. Most of what we know about whales came from the time when we killed them in mass numbers, which is shocking to think about.
All in all, it was a really well rounded read, and Ellis manages to keep it interesting, even though the subject is about one specific animal. The reason I couldn't give this book a better rating is because it's in serious need of heavy editing. Ellis desperately needs to release a second edition – in many areas of the book, there are complete paragraphs practically copied and pasted from earlier in the story. The amount of repetition lead to a lot of skim-reading on my part, consequently making the read tedious at times. Additionally, I found the extreme focus on Moby Dick, as well as every one of its movie adaptions, to be somewhat tiresome. However, as I said before, if you're looking for a truly in-depth read about sperm whales, this is the first book I'd recommend.… (mehr)

This book was all about discoveries made about the marine life on the planet. It concentrates on those discoveries made in the last hundred years. The book was published in 2005 and there are parts of it that are dated, but still it is worth the time spent to read its 220 informative pages.

This book was chocked full of all kinds of information about marine life of all kinds. It read like an encyclopedia, but a very well written encyclopedia. It is even formatted like an encyclopedia with double columns just as encyclopedias had. Each chapter was short enough to make reading the dense text pleasurable and informative without being boring, but long enough to be a quick survey of the topic. It is perfect for an overview of the subject but not so long that it got boring or too academic.

It was also a blunt book, in that the author simply says at the end that marine life at all levels of the food chain are on the edge of extinction. He warns that fin fisheries are unlikely to ever recover, so the world's oceans will NOT be the source of protein now or in the future. The author does a great job of making people who eat fish feel guilty about eating anything that comes from the ocean except for farmed fish. I eat at Long John Silver's once a year and I think it is time for me to end that practice. I am feeling a bit self-righteous about eating fish. I stopped eating fish, except for the aforementioned once-a-year excursion, after I read Mark Kurlansky's book on Cod almost 20 years ago. This book merely reaffirms my resolve.… (mehr)

This book takes a look at Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and its effect on wildlife populations, some endangered. Ellis looks more specifically at rhinos, tigers and bears.

It's a very good, informative book, and I don't think the author takes sides (although I am firmly in one camp on the issue, so my judgment could be clouded). He presents a lot of statistics, and it's hard to see how TCM isn't affecting the populations of these endangered species. Yes, there are other things affecting it, as well, but to see what some of these animal parts are worth (in some cases, more than gold), can leave little doubt as to why they are being poached. Of course, there are also other things affecting the numbers of these species, most notably, human encroachment, but the focus of this book is on TCM. The chapter on bears is tough, with the descriptions of extracting bear bile from live bears, but I think people need to know what's going on. There was also a really interesting chapter comparing the history of TCM to the history of Western medicine, and they are surprisingly similar, until more recent times.

And now, one day after writing my review (though I haven't yet posted it anywhere), I read that one subspecies of rhino is officially extinct, partly due to TCM and poaching. One that was barely holding on when this book was written.… (mehr)