The Book of Eels

This first US edition combines the history of scientific attempts to understand the European eel with memories of the author fishing beside his father. Its subject is specific, yet the book repeatedly reaches the edge of what observation can establish: origin, migration, metamorphosis and the gaps that remain even after centuries of inquiry.

Within this collection, the book replaces the built settings of the first two titles with water and movement. That change also shifts the kind of evidence under discussion. Character can be inferred from behaviour; a biological life cycle demands patient records, specimens and competing hypotheses. The memoir passages keep that research attached to family time rather than presenting science as a separate, finished domain.