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Mean and Lowly Things: Snakes, Science, and Survival in the Congo
written by Kate Jackson
Studio : Harvard University Press
by Harvard University Press
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Released : 2008-04-30
Availability : Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Number of Items : 1
EAN : 9780674029743
Avg. Customer Rating: (based on 17 reviews)
List Price : $27.95
Our Price : $17.19
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Product Description |
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In 2005 Kate Jackson ventured into the remote swamp forests of the northern Congo to collect reptiles and amphibians. Her camping equipment was rudimentary, her knowledge of Congolese customs even more so. She knew how to string a net and set a pitfall trap, but she never imagined the physical and cultural difficulties that awaited her. Culled from the mud-spattered pages of her journals, Mean and Lowly Things reads like a fast-paced adventure story. It is Jackson’s unvarnished account of her research on the front lines of the global biodiversity crisis—coping with interminable delays in obtaining permits, learning to outrun advancing army ants, subsisting on a diet of Spam and manioc, and ultimately falling in love with the strangely beautiful flooded forest. The reptile fauna of the Republic of Congo was all but undescribed, and Jackson’s mission was to carry out the most basic study of the amphibians and reptiles of the swamp forest: to create a simple list of the species that exist there—a crucial first step toward efforts to protect them. When the snakes evaded her carefully set traps, Jackson enlisted people from the villages to bring her specimens. She trained her guide to tag frogs and skinks and to fix them in formalin. As her expensive camera rusted and her Western soap melted, Jackson learned what it took to swim with the snakes—and that there’s a right way and a wrong way to get a baby cobra out of a bottle. (20080415) |
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A Fascinating Adventure Book |
If you like stores of adventure and interested in Africa, this is the best book for you.
Kate Jackson is really "wired" as she labeled herself in the book. A young woman grown up in Canada adventured to the remote Congo tribes to collect "mean and lowly things" for science research. She slept on the bumpy forest floor with all kinds of insects around; bitten by snakes; drank boiled brown colored forest water for weeks and much more that you can find in the book. Just because of that we will have the opportunity to go with her into the wildness of the African jungles where newly created trails will be covered with new growth in days, people drink rain water all year long and you open your eyes just as they are closed at night ... and also you will meet the interesting people who live there ...
Her professionalism showed in this book should be an example for all of us, also her passion for the things she loves.
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great read |
This was a very interesting read, full of scientific information related to herpetology, and the nuts and bolts of organizing a field research trip to Congo. It satisfied my love of travel, as well as the science geek part of me.
The author has a genuine writing voice. She explained her thoughts, motivation, worries and joys of a young research scientist, as she accumulates experiences, as she makes mistakes, and as she learns from them.
The details of real research work in the Congo was very informative, but the personal narration made everything interesting. She explained how and why basic scientific research is done in a bigger ecological sense and in a museum collection sense.
As a bonus, I think this will be a good book to recommend to young people who are interested in going into science, particularly young women. |
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A great read written by a woman with true grit |
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Kate Jackson is a great writer who has written a thoroughly marvelous true-life tale of adventure. I thoroughly admire her amazing journey into the African wetlands to catch, identify, and acquire tissue from snakes, many of them deadly. Make no mistake, this is a woman with the truest grit and the rightest stuff anybody ever saw. With her eye always on the truths she can deliver to other scientists, she shies from nothing, whether it is attacks by biting ants or having to stab herself in the stomach with a needle filled with suspect anti-venom. She's also got just enough of her tongue in cheek to elicit a few chuckles. All in all, just a delightful read and highly recommended for anyone who likes to read true-life adventures. |
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A great read |
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`Mean and Lowly Things' is an incredible tale of adventure, detailing the frustrations and successes of scientific expeditions into the swamp forests of the Congo. Kate Jackson has created a memoir that transports you into central Africa, treating you to the experience of slogging through mud, escaping biting ants, dealing with bureaucrats, and making new discoveries about snakes. Although you may think you never want to visit a swamp forest, the author's enthusiasm for all things herpetological is infectious, and you are left wishing you could join her on the next expedition studying the snakes of central Africa. |
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didn't do much for me |
i'm a herpetologist, on an amateur or, inflating my own ego a little, a semi-professional level, yet this book did little for me.
it serves as an excellent cautionary tale for grad students in any field (bioloiocal, anthropological, you name it) looking to do fieldwork: nightmare upon nightmare, bureaucratic and otherwise, compounded into a seemingly endless maze of red tape and sheer physical discomfort. THAT part, i got.
it was jackson's descriptions of herself, her colleagues and her work that didn't get me. sad to say it, as this was a book i was really looking forward to, but no one in it comes across as especially likable or memorable, including the author.
she has an unfortunate tendency to limit her narrative to a nearly pure (and somehow also cursory) retelling of her surroundings, with little to no personality behind the writing. at several points in the text (particularly one passage juxtaposing field collecting methods - always fatal for the collectee - with her childhood love of crawly things), she seems nearly on the verge of sharing some deep thought process, only to veer swiftly away and back into plodding, discursive narrative.
it wasn't a horrible read (i finished it, though tempted to give up several times); it just didn't live up to much of its potential. she gets points for being a female in a male-dominated field, for choosing a notoriously difficult part of the world in which to conduct her fieldwork, and for occasionally presenting a compelling description in her text. overall, though, i'd say the book was merely average - possibly the greatest sin of all, given what i felt it could have been. |
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