2023 read #69: The Rise and Reign of the Mammals by Steve Brusatte.

The Rise and Reign of the Mammals: A New History, From the Shadow of the Dinosaurs to Us by Steve Brusatte

Illustrations by Todd Marshall and Sarah Shelley

484 pages

Published 2022

Read from June 8 to June 19

Rating: 3 out of 5

I’ve been wary of this book ever since I read Brusatte’s disappointing The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs. One person I know found this book mediocre, and encouraged me to read Riley Black’s The Last Days of the Dinosaurs instead. However, there just haven’t been enough books about the evolutionary radiation of mammals — there’s no way I wouldn’t have picked up this book eventually.

Thankfully, the breezy, almost flippant “these aren’t your dad’s dinosaurs” style that made me roll my eyes at Brusatte’s Rise and Fall is somewhat more subdued here, making for blander but less patronizing prose. (That said, I need Brusatte to stop referring to DNA phylogenetic reconstructions as a “paternity test.”) Not even at its best, however, does this book compare to Elsa Panciroli’s excellent Beasts Before Us. Brusatte maxes out at a serviceable level of pop science journalism, and presents a greatest-hits skim through synapsid history rather than any cohesive, ecosystem-centered overview. He consigns much space to pocket biographies of paleontologists while skimming over vast subject areas — whole eras of life — in just a few pages.

That’s the kind of pop science that sells, I suppose. The public loves to read about personalities; no science book, sadly, is complete without various eccentric scientists. But where Panciroli doesn’t hesitate to call out scientists of the past for their horrendous beliefs and practices — I’m looking at you, Robert Broom — Brusatte maintains the polite veneer of older pop science books. He simply doesn’t talk about it. He does that whole “We just don’t discuss politics with Grandpa” act, thereby sweeping the white supremacist foundations of Western science under the rug.

I was pleased to find that Mammals is a hefty volume; despite the modern taste for human interest anecdotes, there was still room for a modicum of actual science to enjoy in this pop science book. Much of said information is relegated to the endnotes, of course, but it’s nice to have nonetheless. (Brusatte even uses the endnotes to acknowledge a little bit of Robert Broom’s shittiness.) If only more of it had filtered into the text!