Squid Empire, by Danna Staaf

Marine biology has always fascinated me, so I picked up this book about ancient cephalopods with much anticipation. Danna Staaf has a similar fascination, but followed hers all they way down the squiddly rabbit hole (squid hole?) to a PhD in invertebrate biology. Though she discusses squid, nautiluses, and octopuses of today, her focus in this book is on the cephalopods that swam, pulsed, and crawled the seas of planet Earth long before the dinosaurs claimed the land, and who survived their catastrophic end. Though the writing can sometimes get a bit bogged down in scientific terms and explanations, Staaf brings a real joy and accessibility to a subject very few laypeople know anything about. My guess is a lot of biologists could learn quite a bit from this book, as well.

Like The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs, Staaf's book isn't just about squids; it's about evolution itself, and the scientific process we're still making our way through to understand as much about the Earth's past as possible. Some of this information was therefore not entirely new to me (yes, I had read about evo devo before), but seeing it through another lens helped me to understand it better. And Staaf's enthusiasm is infectious, her love of the subject and respect for her colleagues working it in pervades every page, and not in a saccharine way. I have a new respect for the intricacies of evolution in general, and of the cephalopod in particular. This is a must for anyone like me who watches BBC's Blue Planet with their jaws slack and eyes wide, enthralled by every square inch of the water we are surrounded by.

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