This month’s featured titles from Cornellians – many of them by A&S alumni and faculty – include a work of nonfiction about honeybees, a kids’ picture book, and a novel set in rural Nova Scotia.
Piping Hot Bees & Boisterous Buzz-Runners
Thomas Seeley
Kirkus calls this nonfiction book—subtitled 20 Mysteries of Honey Bee Behavior Solved—“fascinating both for its insights about nature and as a portrait of the scientist at work.”
Seeley, the Horace White Professor in Biology Emeritus, is a longtime Cornell faculty member in neurobiology and behavior whose previous books include Honeybee Democracy and The Wisdom of the Hive. In his latest title, he explores a variety of intriguing aspects of honeybee life, from an apiculturist’s perspective.
Says the publisher, Princeton University Press: “In this book, he weaves illuminating personal stories with the latest science, explaining such mysteries as how worker bees function as scouts to choose a home site for their colony, furnish their home with beeswax combs, and stock it with brood and food while keeping tens of thousands of colony inhabitants warm and defended from intruders.”
Knowers and Lovers
Ted Leighton ’70, PhD ’84
Leighton’s second novel, published by a small press in Canada, is a sequel to his debut, A Ring of Justice.
Set in western Nova Scotia, it continues the dramatic arc of scientist Rick Robichaud, who deprioritized his own promising career to facilitate his wife’s dream of practicing veterinary medicine in a rural area.
The plot is catalyzed by the discovery of new construction on a remote part of the Bay of Fundy coast.
It eventually comprises environmental threats, piracy, stolen plutonium, and more—as Rick balances his investigations with caregiving for his infant daughter.
A theatre arts major as an undergrad, Leighton is a retired veterinary pathologist who holds a doctorate from the Vet College as well as a DVM from the University of Saskatchewan, where he’s a professor emeritus. His work in clinical pathology and wildlife disease earned him the Order of Canada, one of the nation’s highest civilian honors.
Kretek Capitalism
Marina Welker
“Causing harm and death when used as intended, the cigarette is no ordinary commodity,” the anthropology professor writes. “The kretek, in turn, is no ordinary cigarette.”
In her nonfiction book from University of California Press—which is also available for free in open-access form—Welker explores the role that smoking and the tobacco industry play in Indonesian society, and the harm they cause.
As she explains, two-thirds of Indonesian men smoke, while just 5% of women there do.
The nation has more than 250,000 tobacco-related deaths annually. And 95% of the tobacco sales in the country consist of kretek, a type of clove-laced cigarette that has become a deeply ingrained part of the culture.
“Anyone who has been to Indonesia will be familiar with the smell of clove cigarettes, which is different from ‘white cigarette’ smoke because it has all this spice in it, like incense,” Welker told the Cornell Chronicle.
“The smoke itself is heavier, the way it hangs in the air, which can become very saturated with cigarette smoke. When tobacco control groups measure the air quality at indoor and outdoor events, they find that it’s quite toxic.”
