Book Review: Laurance, W. (2000) Stinging trees and wait-a-whiles: confessions of a rainforest biologist. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. I must confess that I was hesitant about accepting the offer to critically review William Laurance’s book Stinging trees and wait-a-whiles because it was subtitled confessions of a rainforest biologist. Would there be embarrassing personal revelations from a scientist whose work I much admire? Or would the embroidering of the professional with the personal be a ruse to make some post-modern point about the abject failure of the ecological project? No, the book proved to be a well written, scientifically interesting and an entertaining ‘good read’ describing experiences during a physically demanding field programme associated with a conservation biology PhD research project into the effect of rainforest fragmentation on mammals.
