Dodo: The Bird behind the Legend - Alan Grihault

Mauritius is one of the best places on Earth. I love it: music is great, people are fantastic, and its cultural diversity is a glimmer of hope in a World increasingly divided along sectarian an ethnic lines. In Mauritius, Blacks, Muslims, Chinese, Indians, French, and other groups have learned to live next to each other.

But, as usual, there is a dark side to it: Mauritius is the first documented humankind-made ecocide. The Dodo is the most famous character of this tragedy, in great part thanks to Lewis Carroll.

Dodo: The Bird behind the Legend is a monography written by Alan Grihault, a former British overseas cooperation worker. Grihault's biography is fantastic. And this is a great book, too. With a lot of pictures (most of which were taken from the items in the private collection of Ralfe Whistler), and extremely didactic explanations, this is a book for children and for adults who'd like to learn more about the dodo.

After writing the book, Grihault set up a website dedicated to the dodo and to the solitaire (dodo's cousin from Rodrigues). Unfortunately, it looks like it hasn't been updated in a while, but it's worth checking out if you can't get the book.

From So Simple a Beginning - Charles Darwin and Edward O. Wilson

From So Simple a Beginning collects Charles Darwin's 4 masterpieces: Voyage of the H. M. S. Beagle, On the Origin of Species, The Descent of Man, and The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals. One might actually wonder what is the value of buying a volume of 1700 pages for 25 dollars (in Amazon) including texts easily findable online for free (like, for instance, here), or explanations about the evolution theory in formats more understandable for the 21st audience. 

The answer is easy: there is no value. If want to understand Darwin's thoughts, you can indeed read the texts online or, if you are in a hurry, watch this video that explains evolution in 5 minutes. Darwin's texts are mostly unintelligible from a modern reader's perspective, and the fact that we have developed more friendly tools to understand his theory is probably a nice tribute to Darwin himself.

From So Simple a Beginning is not valuable from the perspective of the added value given by the editor to a work published previously. Edward O. Wilson just presents the works of Darwin with a short introduction and an even more succinct conclusion, mainly focused on Darwin's thoughts on god and religion.He could have added footnotes explaining where Darwin was proved right or wrong.

Shortly, From So Simple a Beginning can be a very good decorator. It will actually make you look smart: after all, it is a two pounds book... But there are cheaper and more effective ways to get to know Charles Darwin.