Reviews
I opened How Living Things Find a Way to Evolve wondering whether it might offer answers about chronic stress. The book begins with the author Madeleine Chige’s own experience of stress. A few years after moving from Berlin to Frankfurt for her doctorate, she had run out of both motivation for her research and mental and physical energy. Then, watching the rabbits in the city, she began to wonder: “I’m living with all this stress, so how are rabbits adapting so well to the city? And why are
This book is an exploration of stress through evolutionary biology. I had never connected evolutionary biology with stress, so I found the approach fresh. Author Madeleine Chêne finished her master's degree and left Berlin for Frankfurt to pursue her doctorate. She planned to study urban rabbits. I found it fascinating that wild rabbits lived in the city: European rabbits, also called burrowing rabbits, filled Frankfurt's urban parks, university campuses, and other places. The author says she
I was drawn to The Breathing Things Will Find a Way to Evolve by its cover, which promised the power of nature and featured a recommendation from botanical illustrator Lee So-young. It exceeded everything I expected. First, the bird on the cover is not the focus. Author Dr. Madeleine Chêne earned a master's degree in biology in Berlin and began her doctorate in Frankfurt, where she studied urban rabbits. She encountered rabbits filling city parks and university campuses. The city had to hire
“Stress as a guide for life?” (p. 21) The book How Living Things Find a Way to Evolve is by Dr. Madeleine Chêne, a behavioral biologist. She says that while living in Frankfurt after moving from Berlin to pursue her doctorate, she experienced intense stress. By coincidence, as she watched the city rabbits—the animals she was studying—bounding energetically among Frankfurt’s high-rises, she felt that she, not the rabbits, was the one who had come to the wrong city. In researching why wild
Before reading this book, I saw the cover and assumed it was about harmony between nature and humans, coexistence, or perhaps a plant essay. But the subject turned out to be stress. Lately, with one thing and another, I had been putting off things I needed to do and feeling very stressed. I learned a lot about stress from this book, and it gave me a meaningful chance to consider from a new perspective how to live each anxious, stressful, tense day, and with what attitude and mindset. Nature
This is an in-depth and engaging exploration of stress, prompted by a question: while pursuing her PhD and struggling with the physical and mental toll of academic pressure, the author watched rabbits filling the city parks, living with such energy. Why had a city full of stress for humans become a satisfying habitat for rabbits? There is no environment without stress. All living things—including animals, plants, and microbes—experience it. When an organism keeps shifting its target values to
Here’s a look at the new book Living Things Find a Way to Evolve. A few lines that stayed with me: “Everything is poison, and nothing is without poison. Only the dose makes it harmless.” —Paracelsus. Only those who have been tempered can enter paradise. The key is finding the right balance between training and killing. “Stress arises because we lie to ourselves! These lies exhaust us, reduce our fitness, and cause stress.” Overall, although the book explains its ideas by drawing on professional
I spent the weekend watching a movie. Today I watched Sully, starring Tom Hanks. It is based on the emergency landing of US Airways Flight 1549 in New York on January 15, 2009. The captain, Chesley Sullenberger, known as Sully, famously landed the plane in the Hudson River after a bird strike and saved all 155 passengers and crew. Later, the airline and the National Transportation Safety Board questioned his judgment, arguing through computer simulations and tests that his decision was wrong.
Let's decide on a purpose: should I read this with stress in mind, or evolutionary biology? After my first read, the introduction was clear: life in Frankfurt had been hell. As I escaped that life, I became interested in stress. How do city rabbits and country rabbits live? How did the city rabbits die in a mass die-off? The detailed ways crops respond during farming; ants' food-sharing system; can tardigrades survive in space? The complexity of urban ecosystems and the characteristics of
The power of nature and ecology to carry us through a day full of change. Nature always chooses the best possible day. This is a story about the natural environment where plants and animals live. For several years now, my in-laws have brought us baby rabbits. When they grow up, they go back to Grandma's, and then another baby rabbit comes. If I read this book, maybe I'll understand our rabbit's feelings better, too. I can't wait to enjoy it!
Madeleine Chige: Things that breathe evolve somehow.
Living Things Somehow Find a Way to Evolve is a ‘kind’ exploration of stress through the lens of evolutionary biology, a book about the ‘strength to live today’ found in the vast natural world. A day in the life of a human living in an urban habitat is arduous: constant change, every day a succession of challenges. Each day brings a new responsibility to bear. After a difficult day, trudging home, we think that we want to escape to a stress-free place, to quiet, peaceful nature. But this is all an illusion. Nature is not ‘quiet.’ Animals, plants, microbes… the vast natural ecosystem changes dramatically every day, and every living thing that breathes adapts to its environment and eventually ‘evolves.’ Faced with the realities before them—weather thrown into turmoil by climate change, habitats disappearing due to development, approaching predators—they confront them with their whole bodies, change themselves, and move toward a better tomorrow.
Korean title: 숨 쉬는 것들은 어떻게든 진화한다
Korean author: 마들렌 치게
Korean publisher: 흐름출판
ISBN-13: 9788965966241
Reviews
I opened How Living Things Find a Way to Evolve wondering whether it might offer answers about chronic stress. The book begins with the author Madeleine Chige’s own experience of stress. A few years after moving from Berlin to Frankfurt for her doctorate, she had run out of both motivation for her research and mental and physical energy. Then, watching the rabbits in the city, she began to wonder: “I’m living with all this stress, so how are rabbits adapting so well to the city? And why are
This book is an exploration of stress through evolutionary biology. I had never connected evolutionary biology with stress, so I found the approach fresh. Author Madeleine Chêne finished her master's degree and left Berlin for Frankfurt to pursue her doctorate. She planned to study urban rabbits. I found it fascinating that wild rabbits lived in the city: European rabbits, also called burrowing rabbits, filled Frankfurt's urban parks, university campuses, and other places. The author says she
I was drawn to The Breathing Things Will Find a Way to Evolve by its cover, which promised the power of nature and featured a recommendation from botanical illustrator Lee So-young. It exceeded everything I expected. First, the bird on the cover is not the focus. Author Dr. Madeleine Chêne earned a master's degree in biology in Berlin and began her doctorate in Frankfurt, where she studied urban rabbits. She encountered rabbits filling city parks and university campuses. The city had to hire
“Stress as a guide for life?” (p. 21) The book How Living Things Find a Way to Evolve is by Dr. Madeleine Chêne, a behavioral biologist. She says that while living in Frankfurt after moving from Berlin to pursue her doctorate, she experienced intense stress. By coincidence, as she watched the city rabbits—the animals she was studying—bounding energetically among Frankfurt’s high-rises, she felt that she, not the rabbits, was the one who had come to the wrong city. In researching why wild
Before reading this book, I saw the cover and assumed it was about harmony between nature and humans, coexistence, or perhaps a plant essay. But the subject turned out to be stress. Lately, with one thing and another, I had been putting off things I needed to do and feeling very stressed. I learned a lot about stress from this book, and it gave me a meaningful chance to consider from a new perspective how to live each anxious, stressful, tense day, and with what attitude and mindset. Nature
This is an in-depth and engaging exploration of stress, prompted by a question: while pursuing her PhD and struggling with the physical and mental toll of academic pressure, the author watched rabbits filling the city parks, living with such energy. Why had a city full of stress for humans become a satisfying habitat for rabbits? There is no environment without stress. All living things—including animals, plants, and microbes—experience it. When an organism keeps shifting its target values to
Here’s a look at the new book Living Things Find a Way to Evolve. A few lines that stayed with me: “Everything is poison, and nothing is without poison. Only the dose makes it harmless.” —Paracelsus. Only those who have been tempered can enter paradise. The key is finding the right balance between training and killing. “Stress arises because we lie to ourselves! These lies exhaust us, reduce our fitness, and cause stress.” Overall, although the book explains its ideas by drawing on professional
I spent the weekend watching a movie. Today I watched Sully, starring Tom Hanks. It is based on the emergency landing of US Airways Flight 1549 in New York on January 15, 2009. The captain, Chesley Sullenberger, known as Sully, famously landed the plane in the Hudson River after a bird strike and saved all 155 passengers and crew. Later, the airline and the National Transportation Safety Board questioned his judgment, arguing through computer simulations and tests that his decision was wrong.
Let's decide on a purpose: should I read this with stress in mind, or evolutionary biology? After my first read, the introduction was clear: life in Frankfurt had been hell. As I escaped that life, I became interested in stress. How do city rabbits and country rabbits live? How did the city rabbits die in a mass die-off? The detailed ways crops respond during farming; ants' food-sharing system; can tardigrades survive in space? The complexity of urban ecosystems and the characteristics of
The power of nature and ecology to carry us through a day full of change. Nature always chooses the best possible day. This is a story about the natural environment where plants and animals live. For several years now, my in-laws have brought us baby rabbits. When they grow up, they go back to Grandma's, and then another baby rabbit comes. If I read this book, maybe I'll understand our rabbit's feelings better, too. I can't wait to enjoy it!
