Scientific American - USA (2022-02)

February 2022, ScientificAmerican.com 73

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IN BRIEF

We then leap back to St. Petersburg

in 1882, where a zoologist discovers that

the long­presumed extinct takhi might

still be living in the far reaches of Mongo­

lia. He becomes consumed with how

to capture some for the garden where

he works.

Soon we are spinning forward in time

again to meet Karin in Mongolia in 1992.

Karin has been ob sessed with the takhi

since she first saw them as a child during

the war in Germany. She has built a stable

herd in a small village in France and is

transporting them back to their native

habitat in Mongolia with the hope that

they can once again breed and survive

in the wild.

In quixotic and propulsive inter­

weaving chapters, Lunde captures the

depth and range of human love in

all forms—our capacity to care for

species other than our own, our desire

to connect with others, and how both

these are so often thwarted by the exter­

nal circum stances of trauma and war.

Filled with haunting notions of interspe­

cies kinship, the reverberations of kind­

ness and care, and the innate drive to love

and survive despite the odds, this book

is one to savor.

Heartbreak:

A Personal and Scientific Journey

by Florence Williams. W. W. Norton, 2022 ($30)

When journalist and author Florence

Williams’s 25­year marriage falls

apart, her health starts to, too. Des­

perate to avoid more of the danger­

ous phy sical damage that heartbreak

can inflict, she pursues information on the “comin­

gled destinies of our cells and our pas sions.” The

result is an engrossing survey of the latest research

on the cardiology, neurology and genomics of lost

love punctuated by the author’s many experiments

with healing, from EMDR therapy to a solo canoe­

ing trip to magic mushrooms. Williams’s journey

through her pain is by turns wrenching, fascinating,

funny and, for so many of us, deeply relatable.

— Dana Dunham

Origin:

A Genetic History of the Americas

by Jennifer Raff. Twelve,  2022  ($30)

Jennifer Raff, who wrote our May 2021

cover story, “Journey into the Americas,”

applies her experience as an anthropol­

ogist and geneticist to a sizable task:

righting the wrongs of both fields’ treat­

ment of Native peoples while addressing how mod­

ern methodologies are now closer to understanding

the origins of Native Americans. Origin presents how

centuries of racist thinking in formed theories that

were widely ac cept ed. Interstitial case studies could

merit entire chapters, from a Monacan burial mound

in Thomas Jefferson’s backyard to a digression on

whether gender or occupation can be inferred from

remains. And Raff makes ample space for Nat ive

voices through original interviews. — Maddie Bender

This Way to the Universe:

A Theoretical Physicist’s Journey

to the Edge of Reality

by Michael Dine. Dutton, 2022 ($28)

Renowned physicist Michael Dine

takes us from the innards of the atom

to the depths of black holes in this

readable, though occasionally vexing,

celebration of science’s most mind­

bending discipline. The text is conversational and

full of delightful asides, but a reader with only one

high school physics course under her belt might

lose her way in some of the thornier explanations

of quantum mechanics, for example. Dine’s enthu­

siastic storytelling makes the read worth it for

those who want to finally wrap their mind around

string theory or the Higgs boson and are up for

an intellectual challenge. — Tess Joosse

The Last

Wild Horses:

A Novel

by Maja Lunde.

Translated by

Diane Oatley.

HarperVia,

2022 ($27.99)

FICTION

Inter species

Epic

Saving rare horses

from calamities past

and future

Review by Robin Marie MacArthur

Norwegian author Maja Lunde became

an international sensation with The His-

tory of Bees , the first novel in what she

is calling her “Climate Quartet.” The much

anticipated third book in that series, The

Last Wild Horses , is further evidence that

some writers know how to spin a tale.

The novel braids three time periods and

places, all linked by the takhi, a rare wild

horse species, and the humans devoted

to saving them.

We start in 2064 in postapocalyptic

Norway. Weather has become unpre­

dictable, society has collapsed, and

migrants move north by foot in search

of food, infrastructure and clean water.

But Eva and her 14­year­old daughter,

Isa, have stayed put on their family’s

farm, trying to stay alive with their cows

and chickens, as well as to protect the

takhi that Eva’s sister began sheltering

years ago.