of Darwin's life, aided 

 by the fortuitous dis- 

 covery of a series of 

 journals written by 

 Darwin's daughter 

 Lizzie. There are a 

 few side plots, and 

 numerous flash- 

 backs re-creating 

 Darwin's travels 

 on the Beagle, but most of the 

 detective work here is of the academic 

 sort, carried out in dimly-lit archives, 

 vaguely suggestive of The Da Vinci Code, 

 but nowhere near as ominous. 



If you're a Darwin buff, you may find 

 much of Darnton's narrative familiar, 

 since he has scrupulously mined infor- 

 mation from Darwin's journals and let- 

 ters as well as from the many Darwin 

 biographies written over the years. But 

 the writing is snappy and smart, and the 

 final diagnosis of Darwin's debility is so 

 audacious and amusing that even the 

 most jaded summer reader will regard 

 the few hours unraveling The Darwin 

 Conspiracy as time well spent. 



The Book of the Dead by Douglas 

 Preston and Lincoln Child (Warner 

 Books; $25.95) 



Most of the action of this gothic 

 tale of Gotham takes place in the 

 remote galleries of the "New York 

 Museum," a thin disguise for the 

 American Museum of Natural 

 History at Central Park West and 

 Seventy-ninth Street. But that's 

 plenty of real estate, considering that the 

 fictional museum includes thirty-four 

 interconnected buildings with more 

 than 2 million square feet of space and 

 more than eighteen miles of corridors. 

 Most of the collection has never been 

 seen by the public, including (accord- 

 ing to Douglas Preston and Lincoln 

 Child) the Tomb of Senef, a colossal 

 Egyptian monument imported stone by 

 stone in the 1 800s, but sealed off for 

 more than three-quarters of a century. 



Archaeologist Nora Kelly is in charge 

 of renovating the tomb for a new exhi- 

 bition, partly to burnish the reputation 

 of the museum, which has been shak- 



en by a recent murder and the theft of 

 its entire diamond collection by arch- 

 fiend Diogenes Pendergast. But there is 

 much more bloodshed to come, as the 

 master criminal unfolds his plan to ter- 

 rorize the rich and powerful of New 

 York City at the official opening of the 

 new exhibition. Only one man can stop 

 the impending catastrophe: Diogenes' 

 older brother, F.B.I. Special Agent 

 Aloysius X.L. Pendergast. Alas, Aloy- 

 sius is locked up in a federal maximum 

 security cell, framed for a murder his 

 brother committed. Is all hope lost? 



Not to worry. Agent Pendergast, 

 whose crime-fightmg skill makes 

 Sherlock Holmes look like Inspector 

 Clouseau, has his own plan. With the 

 help of a group of lower Manhattan ir- 

 regulars, he busts out of stir just in time 

 to stop the massacre of the innocents 

 and to track down his evil sibling. 



I doubt I've given too much away. 

 Agent Pendergast and his crew have ap- 

 peared in several best-selling novels by 

 Preston and Child, and by the rime 

 The Book of the Dead 

 opens, he's al- 

 ready pursued 



the incorrigi- 

 ble Diogenes 

 through Brim- 

 stone and Dance of 

 Death. A short re- 

 view can hardly do 

 justice to the large 

 cast and relentless 

 pace of action of the 

 trilogy, but be warned, 

 ^" once you start reading, 

 it will be hard to stop. The characteri- 

 zation never rises above the level of car- 

 icature, to be sure, and the plotting is 

 never less than over-the-top. But isn't 

 that reason enough to put it on your 

 summer list? 



The Oxygen Murder by Camille Mini- 

 chino (St. Martin's Minotaur; $24.95) 



Not many murder mysteries arc illus- 

 trated by diagrams of inorganic mole- 

 cules, but that seems entirely appropri- 

 ate if the crime involves Gloria Lameri- 

 no, a retired Berkeley physicist current lv 



A Sand County Almanac f 



JULIANNE LUTZ NEWTON 



jfeALDO 



Leopold's 



ODyssEy 



July/August 2006 NATURAL history 49 



"There are two things that 

 interest me: the relation of 

 people to each other, and the 

 relation of people to land." 

 — Aldo Leopold 



A new edition for a 

 new generation 



TWO-TIME PULITZER PRIZE WINNER 



E. O.WILSON 



"A wise personal memoir.. .A 

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