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Secrets of the Savanna by Mark and Delia Owens
In the remote North Luangwa valley of Zambia—one of the great wildernesses remaining on earth—a husband and wife team settled in 1986. Against overwhelming odds, they succeeded in defeating poachers and saving the local elephant population. Undaunted courage is their middle name.

Here’s what the authors had to say about their amazing experience:

You left everything behind, went to Africa, and lived in some of the most remote places on the continent. What drove you to do that?

As young graduate students back in 1972, we heard a lecturer talk about how Africa’s wildlife was disappearing. We worked for several years, sold some of our wedding presents, and left with one-way tickets and backpacks to conserve African wildlife.

Your book is written on several levels. Tell us about that.

On the surface, Secrets of the Savanna is a true-adventure story of how we stopped officially sponsored ivory poachers, who were operating like a drug cartel in an untamed remote African wilderness. So it is a thriller as well as the story of a great win for wildlife and for local village people. But on another level the book reveals how much we learned about humans by studying social animals like elephants and lions — such things as risk taking in males and the genetic basis for girls having close female friends. Wild animals show us why we need our natal troops and a real home and what we lose when these basic social units are fragmented for whatever reason. This book is as much about people as it is about elephants.

How did you stop the poaching? (more…)

Working in obscurity during the 1920s, Henrietta Swan Leavitt made an extraordinary discovery: she formulated an important law that allowed astronomers to measure the size of the universe. Although she died at age 53, her accomplishment little noted. She is today recognized as one of the most influential astronomers of the 20th century.

Miss Leavitt’s Stars: The Untold Story of the Woman Who Discovered How to Measure the Universe by George Johnson (Atlas/Norton, $13.95)

With straightforward prose, William Powers unfolds the story of his time in Liberia during a resurgence of fighting in the country’s devastating 14-year civil war. Stationed as an aid worker in one of Africa’s most war-torn countries, the author comes into forcible contact with the same troubles plaguing Liberians: a corrupt, graft-filled government; a hopelessness created by poverty and instability; and a violence that seems to be an inescapable way of life. And yet Powers also shows Liberia to be a place of indomitable beauty. Likening the country’s rain forests—some of the last surviving tracts in all of West Africa—to a lush, jewel-toned dreamscape, Powers invests much time and effort in preserving this fragile ecosystem from logging, diamond smuggling and poaching. Written with unsentimental empathy for the people of Liberia, Blue Clay People allows “first world” outsiders to understand a place and way of life that was unfathomable before now.

Interesting topics to consider when reading:

At one point Powers describes how well, or not so well, he transitions back into American life during a visit to his fiancée. Leaving much unsaid, the passage still resonates with the author’s disillusionment and trepidation as new and old ways of life clash.

A source of frequent discussion throughout the book is the definition of aid. Powers and many of the people he meets during his stay in Liberia voice very different opinions concerning what entails giving aid, and the price tag attached to such aid.

A continuous thread in Powers’ memoir is the desire for Liberia to move away from dependency toward self-sufficiency and sustainability. This is often linked with having a “first world” culture, which becomes problematic when the Liberian culture is lost or sacrificed in the transition.

Little understood until now—because the giants of the deep spend 95 percent of their time beneath the ocean surface—whales are yielding up their secrets as advanced technology makes new research possible. Douglas Chadwick offers cutting-edge science and an eloquent paean to our connection with the largest creatures ever to inhabit Earth.

The Grandest of Lives: Eye to Eye with Whales by Douglas H. Chadwick (Sierra Club Books/UC Berkeley, $24.95)

Henry Nicholls, an evolutionary biologist, unfolds an absorbing—and, of course, cautionary—extinction tale. In 1971, scientists discovered George, a 5-foot-long, 200-pound tortoise, on the Galapagos Island of Pinta. Since then, researchers at the Charles Darwin Station on Santa Cruz island have attempted to devise a method for reproducing the tortoise, the last of his species, whether by natural or high-tech means.

Lonesome George: The Life and Loves of a Conservation Icon by Henry Nicholls (MacMillan, $24.95)