The Birth of a Father, Dr. Martin...

The Birth of a Father, Dr. Martin Greenberg (Continuum) “encourages fathers to be full partners in parenting, from prenatal decisions through labor and delivery to feeding, changing, comforting and entertaining their infants. It offers convincing evidence of the benefits of being more than good providers and stoic patriarchs” (John V. Loudon).

The War Against the Seals: History of the North American Seal Fishery, Briton Cooper Busch (McGill-Queens University). “The war described here so painstakingly is a historian’s war, full of the many shadings of causes, meanings and cultures, and the gentle conclusion is simply that it persists . . . . This may well be the way of life itself--seals in turn visit horror upon fish, although they do not, of course, make them into slippers. Our tragedy might be that we know the beauty we destroy” (Michael Parfit).

The Management Challenge: Japanese Views, edited by Lester Thurow (MIT) “attempts to correct certain ‘exaggerations and misunderstandings’ associated with such stereotyped images as that Japanese industrial relations are ‘homogeneous’ and the Japanese are a ‘consensual people’ . . . . A highly readable book” (Arthur Weinberg).

Myths of Gender, Anne Fausto-Sterling (Basic). “With a glee rare in scholarly works, (Anne) Fausto-Sterling reveals that some of the most influential studies used to illuminate the behavior of men and women were performed upon species with amazingly little in common with us” (Elaine Kendall).

Origins: The Possibilities of Science for the Genesis of Life on Earth, Robert Shapiro (Summit) examines various ideas about the origins of life. “Perhaps life arrived in the form of bacteria or a virus riding on a beam of starlight on a comet!” Robert Shapiro’s style is conversational, almost folksy, and his “narrative approach is that of a skeptical scientist asking: ‘What is the evidence, where is the supporting data?’ ” (John D. O’Connor).