A review by lit_stacks
Spying on Whales: The Past, Present, and Future of Earth's Most Awesome Creatures by Nick Pyenson

5.0

This book is written by the curator of marine mammal fossils at the Smithsonian’s Natural History Museum, so it is understandably fossil-centric. But oddly the best parts of the book are when Pyenson is waxing poetic about living whales (and not dissecting them on a whaling boat). I did want to hear more about his whale chin discovery, but I also didn’t want to hear more about whaling. I’m just not sure that killing whales is worth the scientific advances. And Pyenson gives mixed signals on the topic. He seems to clearly state that orcas shouldn’t be in tanks but says that some of our best info comes from captive dolphins.