The Alfred Russel Wallace Reader: A Selection of Writings from the Field (Center Books in Natural History)

Rating:
Summary: Historic Justice for A.R. Wallace
Review: Jane Camerini has performed a great service to all who are
interested in evolutionary theory. Wallace deserves to be
regarded as the co-founder of the modern theory of evolution.
He also wrote on a wide range of scientific and social topics.
Camerini's introductory remarks to each of the essays in this
collection help put them in their context.

Rating:
Summary: a Wallace reader for the layperson
Review: Jane Camerini's slender anthology of Wallace's writings (and writings about him) is intended to provide an introduction to the great naturalist, primarily through his adventures in the field. Camerini has chosen a format for presenting this information very similar to that provided by another Wallace scholar, Barbara Beddall, whose "Wallace and Bates in the Tropics" was published way back in 1969. Camerini supplements excerpts from four books with her own introductory commentaries and a few additional Wallace essays, hoping that this will give the reader unfamiliar with his accomplishments some feel for them. I think she succeeds in this endeavor. The book is well organized and presented, including a number of interesting photos and figures, and Camerini's editorial commentaries are mostly right on target. Yet I cannot help but feel the brevity of the treatment will leave some readers puzzled. I'm not sure that the decision to include several essays of a more technical nature in a 200 page work was well advised; the gap between the fieldwork studies and Wallace's thought is considerable--not unfathomable, but not straightforward either--and the average reader may need more help than Camerini gives to appreciate the transition. Alternately, it might have been interesting to dwell strictly on the field studies--incorporating a greater diversity of excerpts--and then merely to refer to his future philosophical directions in a page or two of editorial comment at the end. Still, an interesting contribution to Wallace studies, and one which is likely to both complement and not duplicate the several others that will be appearing over the next months.