Hearsay is Not Excluded: A History of Natural History

Michael Dove (Yale University Press)

Oral tradition, folktales, and Indigenous knowledge are often footnotes in the study of the natural world, but it’s this cultural knowledge that Michael Dove, the Margaret K. Musser Professor of Social Ecology and professor of anthropology, argues is lacking in many scientific disciplines.

In an interview with Yale News, Dove said, “Since the 19th century, the practice of writing about nature and culture as a unity has fallen out of favor, being replaced by narrow studies of topics in the realm of nature or culture but not both.”

In his new book, Dove makes the case that a holistic approach to natural history can help counter growing skepticism of science.

Healing Plants of South Asia: A Handbook of the Medicinal Flora of the Indian Subcontinent

John A. Parrotta (CRC Press)

John Parrotta ’83 MF, ’87 PhD has spent decades researching tropical forest ecology and traditional forest knowledge across the globe.

His latest contribution is a comprehensive resource on fauna at the convergence of traditional medicine, medicinal plants, and the diverse South Asian ecosystems in which they thrive.

The illustrated two-volume compendium of over 2,000 South Asian plant species commonly used in traditional medicine catalogues South Asia’s rich biogeography and ecosystems, traditional medicine practices, and current conservation challenges.

The medicinal plant resources are presented with information helpful to scientists, healers, and conservationists alike and include botanical, ecological, and conservation information as well as traditional therapeutic uses across Ayurvedic, Unani, Siddha, Tibetan, and folk medicine.

Field Guide to the Patchy Anthropocene: The New Nature

Alder Keleman Saxena, Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Jennifer Deger, and Feifei Zhou (Stanford University Press)

Red turpentine beetle. Water hyacinth plant. Yellow fever-carrying mosquito. These are just a handful of the wildly adaptable organisms transformed by human interference that Alder Keleman Saxena ’06 MESc, ’17 PhD and co-authors examine in their new field guide.

Shortlisted for the 2024 Nayef Al-Rodhan Book Prize, this guidebook challenges readers to reexamine “more than human worlds” from a new perspective and to understand, name, and appreciate the resourceful “patches” of human-affected change on our evolving planet.

“At every scale, nature is changing through its entanglements with human infrastructure. The new nature is feral,” they write. “How shall we as observers re-attune ourselves? A field guide can help.”

Indigenous Critical Reflections on Traditional Ecological Knowledge

Pat Gonzales-Rogers, Contributing Author (OSU Press)

In an anthology of critical discourse highlighting Indigenous perspectives on ecological knowledge and value systems, Pat Gonzales-Rogers, an executive fellow at YSE, shares insights in his essay, “The Doctrine of Discovery Still Lives With Us and It Ain’t Good.”

Gonzales-Rogers unpacks how the Age of Discovery set out to not only increase trade and commerce but also expand the church’s reach.

“The Doctrine of Discovery developed a multi-layered matrix that included theological, political, and legal rationale, so that European explorers could colonize and take lands from non-Christians,” Gonzales-Rogers writes.

Moreover, he says, this ancient credo still influences land management and public policies today.