FRUITLESS FALL
By Rowan Jacobsen
Bloomsbury, 2008
Category: Non-fiction for adult readers
It is probably impossible to have lived through the last two years and not at least heard about Colony Collapse Disorder, the mysterious ailment that has ravaged the world’s population of managed honeybees. CCD has been covered in every major newspaper and in magazines from The New Yorker to Martha Stewart Living. This fall, several adult books on the topic are being released. Here’s a tip: Rowan Jacobsen’s FRUITLESS FALL is the one to read.
Despite the media frenzy, very few people understand what is and isn’t true about CCD, or what the collapse of the honeybee will mean to humankind. Jacobsen’s straightforward, no-punches-pulled style forces readers to see the honeybee collapse for what it is: yet another indication that bigger is not always better.
If you are at all interested in the subject–and Good Lord, who isn’t?–I highly recommend this book. And you can think of it as a primer; once you’ve read FRUITLESS FALL you will be ready for THE HIVE DETECTIVES, written by yours truly and to be published as part of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s ‘Scientists in the Field’ series in Spring 2010.
(Yes, I just gave you a homework assignment!)