Harry W. GreeneTracks and Shadows: Field Biology as Art

There are and have been many professional biologists who have specialized in studying the lives of amphibians and reptiles. Yet few of them have chosen to write memoirs of their lives and professional activities and priorities. Such memoirs in recent years have included those by Altig, Crump, Gibbons, Means, and Pianka, among others. Here, Harry Greene joins this group with an articulate and thoughtful memoir written as he nears 70 years of age after a lifetime of extremely diverse experiences, major accomplishments in his field, mentoring his own students, and associating with his own mentors. None of the latter have written their own memoirs but Greene makes up for this in recounting in detail the lives of expertise and devotion to their work by Henry Fitch, William Pyburn, and Gordon Burghardt. Fitch particularly was a mentor and icon to many of us in this field either directly in person or indirectly through his many publications on field studies of reptiles and other vertebrates, and it was extremely gratifying for me to read here about the breadth of his long career. Greene modestly describes his early life including his initial scientific publications while still in high school, his disastrous attempts to pass courses when he started college, and his rapid maturation with life as an emergency medic dealing with peoples' serious and fatal injuries. He was drafted in the late 1960s and his ambulance experience enabled him to become an Army medic, luckily stationed in Europe for two years where he was able to search out reptiles, do research at museums, and broaden his overall horizons. As we follow his career as a faculty member at UC Berkeley and Cornell University, Greene describes his field trips with students to diverse environments ranging from deserts of California to rain forests of Costa Rica. Subsequent chapters describe his pursuit of giant snakes in South America and Africa and a long-term study of rattlesnakes in Arizona. Snakes, spouses, mentors, and good friends and colleagues are recurrent themes throughout. Most personal anecdotes are interesting and serve mainly as ways to personalize the narrative. I found a chapter on hunting deer and wild hogs to be less interesting, although that may be more because I have never been a hunter. This chapter seemed only tenuously connected to the major themes of conservation, evolution, and snake behavior and ecology. Greene's work eloquently describes the joy and wonder and devotion that many of us in this field have had the good fortune to enjoy during our lives - the contact with iconic mentors, colleagues, and students, the field work on amazing animals, and the satisfaction of publication and recognition often shared with significant others.

Everyone raved to me about this book, so I purchased it. Unlike many here, although the information is well-written and easily appreciated by field biologists, I find this book to be more of a eulogy for traditional field biology (especially in the area of floristic botany, for example) in North America rather than praising it.I've been a "professional" field biologist for 22 years now, that is, I've been paid to conduct such work. Someone once said that there are two types of field biologists, one who goes in the field to conduct biology and those who study biology to be in the field; I certainly fall into the latter category, as does the author - that much is very clear. I can certainly relate to his stories, notions of nature, and beliefs in regard to the importance of field biology.However, this book is inline with many of E.O. Wilson's writings, as well of those of John Janavoy's "On Becoming A Biologist," etc. I can relate to his stories very well,, but too well and too easily for the book to offer me a great deal of insight as to how humans can best face a growing environmental crisis on Earth. I don't need to be "transported" as one reviewer commented, nor do I need a philosophical primer to understand what I study - years of formal study and practice along with long-held beliefs that echo a reverence for life, as Albert Schwetizer would say, have molded my approach to nature. To that end, one wonders what the purpose of this book is?I understand his purpose, but wonder how one more book - that is really best-understood by an esoteric audience - will somehow enhance our understanding of our role on this planet.This is just a practical, honest review from me, and I readily acknowledge his writing ability and story telling...it's just another unsettling reminder of what I recognize every day, everywhere I go.

When the general population thinks of a book on biology, one probably thinks of "boring" single cell animals, photosynthesis, and so on. To make it worse, this book is about SNAKES! Yuck! - NOT!!! Harry Greene is one of the best biologists and "teachers" I've ever known. This is simply fact, plain and true. This book takes you on a journey through biological history that is so interesting that I simply could not put the book down. During your trip through the book the author is teaching and the reader is learning interesting biological facts and the reader is probably not even aware that they are learning and being completely entertained at the same time. I have read the author's CV and all the awards he has received for teaching college students. I have also watched the author teach children about how snakes swallow their food and make it fun for these students. Prepare to have "fun", be entertained and learn biological information and then learn to look differently at nature and ask why. If I could keep only a few books, it would be some field guides and "Track and Shadows" which I will read many, many times and keep very close.K. McCloud

Harry Greene, a life-long advocate for nature and leading research herpetologist, has written an amazing book here. Some, but certainly not all, of us who study nature understand that humans are part of nature and that there is a, well, peculiar "human" element to being human. This book interweaves, often with bold personal confessions, how Harry Greene moved forward with his state-of-the-art biological studies, always keenly aware of his own human-ness and the omnipresent perspective that simply being a living human brought to his research. All biologists study life from the inevitable perspective of being alive themselves, but I've never seen any of my colleagues address that unique intersection of subjective and objective perspectives as has been done here. This book is perhaps more about being a human being as it is about nature or herpetology. Highly recommended.