Peterson Reference Guide to Bird Behavior by John Kricher

Basic overview with pretty pictures

Roger Tory Peterson (1908–1996) was an American artist and naturalist who was probably the most important figure in the development of birding as a hobby, pastime, and/or obsession. His line of Peterson Field Guides has grown beyond ornithology to over 50 volumes examining diverse aspects of nature and ecology (not all authored by Peterson). In 2015, the Peterson Institute started adding a series of Peterson Reference Guides to their line of books. The Peterson Reference Guide to Bird Behavior, written by John Kricher, was published in 2020.

I expected these Reference Guides to be for advanced birders who want to delve deeper than what’s found in the typical field guide, perhaps something along the lines of Kenn Kaufman’s Advanced Birding, also in the Peterson line. I found the Peterson Reference Guide to Bird Behavior, however, to be surprisingly basic. Most of the information imparted in this volume can likely be found in the introductory chapters of a good field guide—the opening pages that most people ignore because they just look at the bird pictures. The way Kricher delivers the information is also not ideal. The book is intentionally written for a beginning-birder, non-scientific audience, but that doesn’t stop the text from being at times confusing and often boring.

The first half of the book provides some valuable information on bird anatomy. Those lessons are not aided, however, by the absence of diagrams in this book. That is likely a conscious choice on the part of the publisher: If we put a lot of pretty photographs in the book, that will attract general readers, but if we include diagrams, that will scare general readers away. They’ll think the book is too intense for them, like a textbook. So everything is written out by Kricher in prose paragraphs, even when that’s not the most appropriate way to deliver the information. The chapter on different stages of molting, for instance, is quite difficult to comprehend, when a simple table or chart would have made it so much easier to understand and remember. But if we put a table in the book, we’ll scare away those general readers! If you just want a general book on birds and the cool things they do, full of pretty pictures, then I would recommend David Attenborough’s The Life of Birds.

The most difficult aspect of writing or reading a book like this is that the general subject of birds, even just North American birds, encompasses an incredibly broad and diverse range of species and behaviors. The result of this is that most of the text reads like “Some birds do this. Some birds do that.” The only solution for that is to consult a book with specific behavioral information on every individual species, such as Kaufman’s Lives of North American Birds. That book is truly a reference guide, while Kricher’s is really more of a primer. Kricher tries to solve the problem of diversity by providing many examples. The trouble with this approach is that the book consists almost entirely of examples with very few principles or conclusions drawn. I also don’t like the fact that Kricher talks about himself so much in this book: I once saw this, or I once banded such-and-such a bird. I’m from the Northeast, so we’re mostly going to talk about Northeastern birds. I don’t really care what your personal perspective is. I want to learn about the birds, and not just the birds with which you have some kind of personal connection.

I have seen the Peterson Reference Guide for Sparrows and for Woodpeckers, and they seem to be more of what I expected from these Reference Guides. Those books appear to be deeper and more thorough in nature, simply because they’re not expected to cover every bird species imaginable. (and the publisher allowed some diagrams!) In general, the Peterson Field Guides are great; I’ve derived much joy and learning from them. This particular Reference Guide to Bird Behavior, however, is not one of the Institute’s better-thought-out offerings.

Heartbreaker by Mike Campbell with Ari Surdoval

Soft-spoken guitarist with much to say

Mike Campbell may not be a household name, but you’d probably recognize his face if you saw it. He’s the guy who stood next to Tom Petty for about the past 50 years. Campbell is the guitarist for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, as well as Petty’s band from the early 1970s, Mudcrutch. He is also a sought-after session musician, songwriter, and recording producer. Since Campbell’s autobiography, entitled Heartbreaker, was published in 2025, you can add bestselling author to that list. This book is really an excellent rock memoir, even though I’m not a zealous Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers fan. I like their music, but I don’t have all their lyrics memorized or know Petty’s life story. I’m actually a bigger fan of Campbell than I am of Petty. Campbell’s probably one of the top ten living guitarists in rock, and I like the work he’s done with other artists like Bob Dylan, Don Henley, Stevie Nicks, and others. I really enjoyed Peter Bogdanovich’s documentary film about the Heartbreakers, Runnin’ Down a Dream. This band has one of the better rags-to-riches stories in rock. Bogdanovich’s take on the band is a lot more sunshiny than Campbell’s account. Here in Heartbreaker, you get to see a darker side of Tom Petty. Campbell clearly loves and admires Petty, and would die for him, but he relates how Petty at times could be egotistical, vindictive, and, well, petty.

The bulk of Campbell’s account focuses on his and Petty’s early career. Before you ever even get to the Heartbreakers, about a third of the book is spent on Mudcrutch. If anybody still thinks rock and roll is a “money for nothing” profession, they should read Campbell’s recollections of how he and his bandmates had to claw their way to the top. As Campbell relates, he was dirt-poor to begin with, when growing up in Gainesville, Florida. At first, choosing to devote his life to a rock band did not improve his financial situation any, though his malnourishment kept him out of the Vietnam War. Even after the Heartbreakers had a half dozen hits getting frequent radio airplay, and their album Damn the Torpedoes went triple platinum, Campbell was still in financial dire straits. Such is the musician’s plight when your name is not the one in front of the band. Not until Campbell wrote the music to Don Henley’s “Boys of Summer” did he reach a level of financial security where he could reliably pay his mortgage.

Of course, from such humble beginnings things took off considerably. Campbell eventually did get to live the life of a rich and famous rock star. Despite his tremendous success, Campbell comes across as very humble, grateful, and down-to-earth. He talks as if he’s an average-joe, unassuming working stiff who’s just as amazed as we would be when members of the Beatles, the Stones, Fleetwood Mac, or Bob Dylan show up on his doorstep asking for his help. You get some very entertaining and candid behind-the-scenes insights into all of the rock luminaries that Campbell has rubbed elbows with. As a Dylan fan, I really enjoyed Campbell’s humorous and revealing stories about touring and recording with Dylan.

Heartbreaker delivers everything fans could ask for in a rock memoir. I assume Campbell’s coauthor Ari Surdoval is responsible for how well-written this book is. The way the stories unfold is quite skillfully done, captivating, and addictive. Campbell covers the recording of every album, every touring milestone, every band personnel change, every interior personality conflict, and every record company business deal. Not being a musician myself, there’s more here about guitars and playing them than I can understand. Drugs are discussed as a fact of the rock and roll life, not as a badge of honor nor a cross to bear, neither glorified nor scorned. The consequences of drugs are plainly evident in some of the book’s sadder moments—the death of Petty and of bassist Howie Epstein. Overall, however, Campbell’s memoir is a life-affirming celebration of music and friendship, full of humor and poignancy. I read a fair amount of these classic-rock autobiographies, and Heartbreaker is a superb addition to the genre.

Tartarin of Tarascon by Alphonse Daudet

Underwhelming adventures of a comical hero

Alphonse Daudet (1840–1897) is a beloved writer in his native France but not so familiar to American readers. He is considered a naturalist writer, but his works tend to be lighter and more humorous than contemporaries like Emile Zola or Joris-Karl Huysmans. Daudet was born in the South of France, and his novels and stories are often set in that region of the country. One such novel is Tartarin of Tarascon, published in 1872. This book must have achieved some degree of success in France because it spawned two sequels: Tartarin on the Alps and Port Tarascon.

Tarascon is a department in the French region of Provence, near the Mediterranean Coast. Daudet describes it as a quaint, bucolic locale where hunting is the primary pastime. One resident of this district is Tartarin, a short, stocky, he-man who reads adventure novels and dreams of exploring exotic lands. He has never left Tarascon, however, and has never done anything to distinguish himself as particularly intrepid. Nevertheless, as a big fish in a small pond, the other hunters of Tarascon regard him as somewhat of a local hero. One day the circus comes to town, bringing with it a caged lion. When Tartarin steps up to the cage to regard the beast, he is heard to mutter something along the lines of, “I’d like to take a crack at one of those.” The folks of Tarascon inflate this comment into a rumor that Tartarin is planning a trip to Africa to hunt lions. After a while, the rumor becomes so insistent that Tartarin feels the only way he can save face is to make the rumor a reality.

The problem is, Tartarin is somewhat of a coward. Daudet describes him as having two personalities—part Don Quixote, the romantic hero, and part Sancho Panza, the cautious everyman. He is ill-equipped with the courage required to make an international voyage, much less hunt the king of the jungle. Feeling obligated, however, to do so, he embarks on a boat to Algeria.

This all sounds like the set-up for a funny slapstick comedy about a clumsy sad sack who stumbles his way by dumb luck through dangerous situations. The humor here, however, has not aged well, and the gags don’t inspire much laughter anymore. The jokes are so simplistic that I wondered if this were perhaps written for children. Daudet spends too much time convincing us of Tartarin’s insignificance and ineptitude. By the time he gets to anything resembling an adventure, more than half the book has already gone by. Things don’t really pick up a whole lot once Tartarin arrives in Africa, either. The hardest part about shooting a lion is finding one. Eventually, the novel is wrapped up with an ending that just feels silly and pointless.

If the plot is so sluggish, what’s the main attraction here? The character of Tartarin does inspire some sympathy. He’s an underdog the reader can root for. French readers likely would have recognized him as a certain stereotypical type of Southerner. English-language readers probably won’t get that connotation but will still recognize Tartarin as a familiar type of lovable loser who bites off more than he can chew. Such satire is not enough to bring any laughter or excitement to the proceedings, however. Like drifting down a lazy river, this book just kind of coasts along, and the ride ultimately feels inconsequential.

Dune: The Butlerian Jihad by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson

Star Wars stole from Dune; now Dune steals from Star Wars

I’m a huge fan of Frank Herbert’s Dune saga, the original six novels that were published during his lifetime. I have read each of those books at least three times. For many years, however, I have purposely avoided reading any of the posthumous prequels or sequels put out by his son Brian Herbert. Brian’s takeover of the Dune franchise has always seemed to me a shameless nepo-baby move. Can Brian Herbert even write? I don’t know. I’ve never read anything written solely by him, except for his biography of his father, Dreamer of Dune, which I found disappointing. A smart move by Brian, however, was to team up with prolific sci-fi author Kevin J. Anderson. The recent Dune movies have renewed my enchantment with Frank’s fictional universe. Since I keep running into Brian’s Dune books in used book stores, I finally broke down and read one.

Dune: The Butlerian Jihad was published in 2002. It’s not the first Dune book that Brian Herbert and Anderson wrote, but it’s the first book chronologically in Dune history. The Butlerian Jihad is referenced in Frank Herbert’s books as a historic event having happened about 10,000 years in the past. It was then that mankind rose up against artificial intelligence and destroyed and outlawed computers and robots, which is why you never see any droids in the Dune books. Frank Herbert never sketched out the details of that landmark event, thus leaving his son the opportunity to write that history. I believe Frank Herbert named the jihad after Samuel Butler, author of Erewhon, an 1872 novel that presages a similar revolt against AI. In this Dune prequel, however, the jihad is named after a Butler family: Manion Butler is the political leader of the free humans, and his daughter Serena Butler is a prominent politician who inspires the humans to rebellion.

All of the familiar Dune planets are involved in this story, as well as a few new ones, including Earth. The groups and families that you would expect to be living on those planets, however, is much jumbled from the original Dune books. Cultures can move around a lot in 10,000 years, apparently. Because the Butlerian Jihad is in many ways the genesis of the Dune universe, Herbert and Anderson get to play with a lot of origin stories in this book. Here we get the origin of the spice trade, the Fremen, worm-riding, the Tleilaxu, possibly the Bene Gesserit (too soon to tell), and the Holtzman shields that characters wear to protect themselves in battle. We even get the origin of glowglobes, as if anyone was clamoring for that. Tio Holtzman, the creator of the Holtzman Effect, is a character in this novel, as are Aurelius Venport and Norma Cenva, who are mentioned in God Emperor of Dune as the creators of the foldspace technology that made the Spacing Guild possible (They haven’t invented that yet). Two of the major characters are an Atreides and a Harkonnen, but they are a far cry from the roles their families play in the original Dune. The treatment of the Atreides name is rather disappointing here compared to the illustrious history of the family that Frank Herbert hinted at in his books.

When George Lucas made Star Wars, he stole a lot of ideas from Dune. This book, however, reads as though Brian and Kevin stole some of those ideas back. This reads a lot like a Star Wars novelization. There’s a Luke Skywalker-type character and a Princess Leia-type character; not so much a Han Solo, though. The story is about a rebellion against an evil empire run by armored overlords. The Luke figure is the Darth Vader figure’s son. This is mostly typical interplanetary war fare without any of the philosophy or religious undertext one expects from Frank Herbert’s Dune. Anything that’s original in this book came out of Frank’s head, not Brian and Kevin’s.

Dune: The Butlerian Jihad certainly isn’t boring, but it’s neither as deep nor as awe-inspiring as Daddy Herbert’s books. I got more enjoyment and intellectual stimulation from The Dune Encyclopedia (1984), a non-canon expansion of the Dune mythos to which Frank Herbert gave his blessing. Which brings up another point: I’m not a fan of the way Brian Herbert has kept such a tight fist on the Dune legacy for so many years. If he had opened up the Dune universe to more licensing, as was done with the Star Wars and Star Trek franchises, the result would have been a lot more novels, comics, TV shows, etc. set in the Dune world. Many of those productions would have been non-canon and maybe downright bad, but, like those of Star Wars and Star Trek, the Dune characters would probably be household names by now. Even if Brian Herbert’s name on this book makes it “official,” I don’t think he and Anderson have done any better than many other sci-fi writers would have done. Despite my lukewarm reaction to this entry in the Dune saga, however, it’s probably got me hooked enough to at least read through this Butlerian trilogy.

Là-bas (Down There) by Joris-Karl Huysmans

Shock lit from a Zola protégé

Émile Zola, founder of the French literary school of Naturalism, was often castigated by his contemporary critics for including vulgar and disgusting subject matter in his novels. Much of what was considered vulgar and disgusting in the late 19th century, however, we today would just consider realism. One of Zola’s more prominent literary protégés, however, seemed to take such criticism as a challenge and proceeded to actively court controversy and deliberately shock readers with the decadent and gruesome content of his writings. Joris-Karl (or J. K.) Huysmans (1848–1907) was the author of À rebours (Against the Grain) and Là-bas (Down There or The Damned). The latter book, published in 1891, deals with the subject of Satanism in France.

In Paris, a writer named Durtal is working on a biography of a historical figure named Gilles de Rais (1405–1440), a French baron who fought alongside Joan of Arc. Gilles de Rais was tried and executed for abducting, torturing, raping, and murdering at least 140 children. According to Durtal, these heinous crimes, which Huysmans describes in graphic detail, were acts of Satanic worship. Durtal feels that in order to truly understand Gilles de Rais, he must delve into the activities of contemporary Satanists. His investigation leads him through a series of friend-of-a-friend referrals that bring him closer to rubbing elbows with real live devil worshippers in one of their Satanic ceremonies.

Much of the story is told through dinner conversations between Durtal and his friends des Hermies, a physician; Carhaix, a church bell-ringer; and sometimes Gévingey, an astrologer. It is to these listeners that Durtal relates much of the history of Gilles de Rais that he has uncovered. When Durtal is not dining with these companions, the story turns to his love life. He receives a letter from a secret admirer, a fan of his work, and begins an amorous correspondence with her. What comes out of the conversations between Durtal and his friends is a nostalgia for medievalism in preference to the modern world. Even though they’re not satanists, they enjoy dabbling in superstitions and the occult because such matters harken back to those earlier times. A lot of supernatural conspiracy theories are brought up at the dinner table, and it’s always somewhat unclear whether Huysmans actually believes this stuff, or if these are just the thoughts of his fictional characters. It was always clear where Zola stood on religion, but I don’t know Huysmans well enough to judge his supernatural inclinations.

Judging from Là-bas, Huysmans seems to want to be the Marilyn Manson of French literature. The way he’s written this book reminds one of those heavy metal bands that try really hard to be louder, harder, and more demonic than everyone else. Even for libertine France, there is a surprising amount of indecent and risqué content for 1891: semi-graphic sex, sacrilege and blasphemy, bodily functions and feces, mass murders, rape, sodomy, pedophilia, and, of course, a lot of talk about the devil. Even when Huysmans isn’t discussing one of these topics, he goes out of his way to digress gratuitously into some off-putting subject, such as food sanitation. There is a sexual affair in this book between Durtal and a married woman, but Huysmans doesn’t even make it titillating. Instead, he describes it as the most annoying, ungratifying, and pointless love affair imaginable.

There’s a lot that’s unpleasant about Là-bas, but it is interesting. Sometimes it reads like classic Zola-esque naturalism, and sometimes it reads like a 1970s Satanic B-movie. It’s rarely boring, which is more than I can say for Huysmans’s À rebours, but I can’t really recommend this as a great work of literature.

Icarus; or, The Future of Science by Bertrand Russell

Pessimistic outlook on scientific progress

Bertrand Russell won the 1950 Nobel Prize in Literature, even though he was not a literary writer. He was a philosopher and mathematician who broke through to a wider general audience as a public intellectual. His essay Icarus; or, The Future of Science was published in 1924 as a 72-page book. The London publisher Paul Kegan produced a series of 110 books called To-day and To-morrow, consisting of short volumes containing essays that speculate on the future. The first book in this series was Daedelus; or, Science and the Future by J. B. S. Haldane. Russell’s Icarus, published six months later, is a response to Daedelus. The two authors were not in total disagreement. Both expressed doubts that some recent scientific advances were actually beneficial to mankind, but overall Haldane was the more optimistic of the two. In general, Haldane thought scientific advances would elevate the happiness of the common man, while Russell predicts that only the powerful will reap the benefits of progress.

Russell opens Icarus by stating he’s not going to talk much about the biological sciences. That’s not his department, and Haldane already covered that topic sufficiently in Daedelus. Strangely, however, Russell then goes on to talk mostly about biological sciences: genetics, eugenics, birth control, and anthropology. The longest chapter discusses changes brought on by the Industrial Revolution. Russell really doesn’t discuss technology much at all, but rather focuses on how our modern industrial and commercial society has spawned a revolution in organization, both in terms of efficiency and ubiquity. The result is that people now have less control over their lives than they did in, say, the 17th century, since much of our existence is regimented by organizational bureaucracy and government oversight, from our lives at work to the media we consume to the education of our children. Russell goes on to argue that science may very well be the downfall of liberalism and democracy.

Science would increase mankind’s happiness and health, Russell argues, if man were a rational being, rather than an emotional and greedy animal. Rapid scientific progress upsets the comfort zone between man’s desires and living conditions. In addition to the mythical metaphor of Icarus, Russell offers the analogy of how wolves become accustomed to periods of starvation; as a result their evolutionary descendants, domestic dogs, overeat every chance they get. It would be interesting to hear Russell’s take on the current (human) obesity epidemic, something he does not predict here.

I suspect that Icarus may have been delivered as a lecture before it was published in book form. That’s how it reads, anyway. The two books, Daedelus and Icarus, comprise a sort of debate in print, a point/counterpoint. Much of what Russell predicts for the future has already come to pass—declining birth rates, global economy, media empires, the arms race, and a general dumbing down of humanity. He presents some really interesting ideas here, but the obvious fault of the book is its brevity. It would have been a more productive work if Russell had had more room to develop his arguments, but the format of the To-day and To-morrow series confined it to a brief discussion. There aren’t enough pages for him to really convince you of anything. This is a thought-provoking work, but more thoughts are provoked than satisfied. Perhaps Russell delves deeper into these topics in other books, and I have yet to discover them.

Niels Klim’s Journey Under the Ground by Ludvig Holberg

18th-century sci-fi from a Danish Voltaire

Niels Klim’s Journey Under the Ground or Niels Klim’s Underground Travels is a science fiction novel published way back in 1741. It was penned by Danish author Ludvig Holberg. The edition I read included a brief biography of Holberg, which makes him out to sound like Denmark’s version of Voltaire. He was that Scandinavian nation’s pre-eminent man of letters in the 18th century, an Enlightenment freethinker who, besides this one novel, also wrote books on philosophy, history, and law, as well as plays and poetry. Niels Klim’s Journey, Holberg’s only novel, is very much in the same vein of satirical sci-fi and fantasy literature as Voltaire’s Micromegas (1752) and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726).

The story takes place in 1664. Niels Klim, a recent graduate of a Copenhagen university, returns to his hometown of Bergen in Norway. Near that city is a mountain with a mysterious hole in it, from which warm air emanates. Someone should really investigate that hole, so Niels volunteers to lead an expedition. He enters the cave with a small team of men. While rappelling into a chasm, Niels’s rope breaks, and he falls for a very long time.

It turns out that the Earth is a hollow shell. Inside is an inner space complete with a small sun and a planet about 600 miles in circumference, named Nazar. Niels lands on this planet and finds himself in the kingdom of Potu. The citizens of Potu are intelligent, speaking trees. Unlike trees we know, they are not stationary, and can walk using their roots, but not quickly. They welcome Niels into their society and, due to his long legs, they give him the job of courier-general. The Potuans include many races, essentially different species of tree, each with its own peculiar characteristics and personality traits. In addition to Nazar, Niels also explores what Nazarians call “the firmament,” actually the interior surface of the Earth’s sphere, which also bears nations and their inhabitants. There he encounters civilizations of beings resembling animals of the surface world, but possessing language, the ability to walk upright, and human-like hands.

In total, Niels spends twelve years in this underground universe. Unlike Gulliver, who visited about a half dozen different lands in his travels, Niels seems to encounter a new race of beings every few pages, each with their own strange quirks. I’m sure many of these fictional peoples are meant to satirize different nations and polities of Holberg’s day. Not being an 18th-century Dane myself, I’m sure much of that satire was lost on me. For today’s reader, however, Niels Klim’s Journey Under the Ground does make for more accessible and humourous reading than Voltaire’s satires, such as Candide or Zadig. Even if you don’t know the politics of the time, you can enjoy Holberg making fun of various types of people and systems of government. There is a land where gender roles are reversed, for example. The women are sexual predators, and the men are expected to be chaste virgins and slut-shamed if they aren’t. Thus, Holberg points out some of the ridiculous double standards placed on women of his time. Another land is inhabited by philosophers and academics who are so focused on their search for knowledge that they have abandoned all personal hygiene and social graces. Each little country Niels visits has its share of comedic surprises.

With this novel, Holberg inaugurated the hollow-Earth subgenre of science fiction, from which would arise Symzonia (1820), Journey to the Center of the Earth (1867), Mizora (1881), A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder (1888), The Smoky God (1908), and At the Earth’s Core (1914), among others. Niels Klim’s Journey Under the Ground deserves respect as a pioneering work in science fiction, but it’s not just some stodgy old vintage antique that belongs in a museum display case. After all these years, it’s still fun to read.