Archives par étiquette : The Martell Agency

OCTOPUS X de Kenna Hughes-Castleberry

A fascinating narrative about “citizen science” and the discovery of the mysterious creature that has been called “the Bigfoot of Octopuses” – perfect for readers of Sy Montgomery and Ed Yong

OCTOPUS X
by Kenna Hughes-Castleberry
Island Books, 2026
(via The Martell Agency)

OCTOPUS X will be an exploration of passionate “citizen science” in the person of diver and artist Arcadio Rodaniche, who, along with his mentor and famed cephalopod behavioralist Martin Moynihan, found a mysterious colony of social octopuses off the coast of Panama. These octopuses were unlike any previously described, as they lived in mated pairs, constantly laid eggs, mated beak-to-beak, and exhibited unique hunting strategies, all of which went against the norm for octopus behavior.

Fascinated by these creatures, Rodaniche studied them at his Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) laboratory. He tried to present his findings at a Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) symposium but was laughed out of the event as few believed his claims about this bizarre octopus (it didn’t help that he didn’t have an academic background in cephalopod research but instead had an electrical engineering degree). Rejected, his paper and findings sat untouched for decades, with only his drawing of the animal accompanying them, adding to the allure of this creature.

Then, some years later, a team of researchers at U.C. Berkeley obtained samples of Rodaniche’s mysterious octopus, and their observations validated everything Rodaniche found. They asked Rodaniche to co-author their paper, and in 2016, they released their findings to the world. Even with this validation, Rodaniche’s story has never been fully told. Unfortunately, Rodaniche died only five months after seeing his work validated.

Currently, this octopus (known commonly as the Larger Pacific Striped Octopus or LPSO) is being genetically analyzed by a separate team from U.C. Berkeley working to classify it as its own species scientifically. If this happens, the lead researcher, Dr. Gul Dolen, plans to name the animal Octopus rodaniche, giving a further victorious ending to Rodaniche’s story. Kenna also plans to highlight ongoing research to study the LPSO in its wild habitat, which has never been done before.

Kenna Hughes-Castleberry is the Science Communicator at JILA (a world-leading physics research institute established by CU Boulder and NIST) and a freelance science journalist. She focuses on animal intelligence, specifically in corvids and cephalopods. Her work has appeared in such publications as National Geographic, Scientific American, New Scientist, and Discover Magazine. She holds several degrees, including undergraduate degrees in English and Biology from Colorado State University and a Master’s degree in Science Communication from Imperial College London.

HOW FLOWERS MADE OUR WORLD de David George Haskell

Flowers are beautiful revolutionaries. When they evolved, they remade the natural world. Almost all of nature now depends on them. We live on a floral planet, yet flowers don’t get the credit they deserve. We admire them for their beauty, not their world-changing power. In this revealing new book, internationally renowned nature writer David Haskell puts flowers back where they belong, at the center of the story about how our planet came to be and how it thrives today.

HOW FLOWERS MADE OUR WORLD:
Revolutions of Cooperation, Beauty, and Illusion
by David George Haskell
Viking, 2026
(via The Martell Agency)

Flowers are innovators. They used beauty to transform former enemies into cooperative partners. They reinvented plant growth, sex, and motherhood. Through genetic nimbleness, they turned past environmental upheavals into opportunities for renewal. This inventiveness allowed them to build and sustain rain forests, savannahs, prairies, and even ocean shores.

Flowers create opportunities for others. Butterflies and bees would not exist without them. Modern birds diversified in lockstep with flowers. Flowers shaped our species’ history, too. Grasses caused our ape ancestors to come down from the trees. Agriculture, with flowering plants at its heart, is the foundation of all modern civilizations.

Although flowers lack nerves, they created a language of beauty to converse with animals. We draw this conversation into human social networks, using cut blooms, floral aromas, and flower symbolism to mediate our signals to one another. Illusion is beauty’s companion. Flowers dupe many pollinators, and we use flowers to conceal, mask, or deflect. By breeding and growing flowers, we create both beauty and illusions: paradoxically, flowers produced by horticulture can be dangerous to pollinators.

The study of flowers revolutionized science and was a foundation of the horrors of colonialism. Today, we look to the resilience and genetic flexibility of flowering plants to help us face the crises of climate change and extinction. Flowers thrived in the face of past calamity and can do so again.

Flowers are the among most consequential creatures ever to have evolved, but no book to date centers and elevates this story, much of which has been discovered only in the last decade. Today, interest among the reading public in the wonders of plants is high, as is our need to learn from them. Now is a perfect time to celebrate the story of how flowers made our world.

David Haskell’s work integrates scientific, literary, and contemplative studies of the natural world. He is a professor of biology and environmental studies at the University of the South and a Guggenheim Fellow. His 2017 book The Songs of Trees won the John Burroughs Medal for Outstanding Nature Writing. His 2012 book The Forest Unseen and 2022 book Sounds Wild and Broken were both finalists for the Pulitzer Prize and were shortlisted for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award.

PLAYING PUZZLES WITH DOLPHINS de Kelly Jaakkola

PLAYING PUZZLES WITH DOLPHINS promises to be a wonderfully informative and entertaining book on how dolphins think, revealing the vast cognitive ability of so many of our animal companions. A book for all readers interested in the latest research on animal intelligence.

PLAYING PUZZLES WITH DOLPHINS
by Kelly Jaakkola, Ph.D.
Anchor/Doubleday, 2025
(via The Martell Agency)

Perhaps more than any other wild creature, we have long been dazzled by dolphin intelligence and their affecting level of interaction with humans. But what is the nature and dimension of dolphin intelligence? Do they count? Do they have language or anything like it? Can they imitate behavior (even if blindfolded)? How do they coordinate their communication and cooperation?

Writing with insight and wit, Jaakkola will reveal the crucial role of puzzles and games for both researching and challenging dolphins’ minds and take readers behind the scenes of her own research on dolphin cognition to show the logic of how we know what we know, as well as the complexity, humor, and pure thrill that comes from running creative experiments with animals who don’t know your intended script and very clearly have minds of their own. The new information presented enhances our understanding of the inner life of these special creatures, as they actually exist and can thrive in nature, not just in the popular imagination.

Kelly Jaakkola is a cognitive psychologist, marine mammal scientist, and Director of Research for DRC. She earned her Masters degree in Psychology from Emory University, where she began her career studying cognition in chimpanzees and human children and received her Ph.D. in Cognitive Science from MIT. Her past research includes studies on number concepts, object permanence, imitation, and communication in dolphins, chimpanzees, and human children. Her current work focuses on dolphin cognition, communication, and welfare.

Dr. Jaakkola’s research has been published in numerous international scientific journals and book chapters, and her work on dolphin cognition has received worldwide coverage in newspapers, magazine articles, books, and television. She has taught courses on human and animal cognition at several colleges and chairs the Scientific Advisory Committee for the Alliance of Marine Mammal Parks and Aquariums.

LAST TO EAT, LAST TO LEARN de Pashtana Durrani

From young Afghani activist and Amnesty International Global Youth Ambassador Pashtana Durrani, a deeply inspiring memoir about the power of learning and the value of educators in their many forms – from teachers, mentors, and role models, to fathers, mothers, and any one of us with the drive to stand against ignorance.

LAST TO EAT, LAST TO LEARN
My Life in Afghanistan Fighting to Educate Women
by Pashtana Durrani, with Tamara Bralo
Kensington, March 2024
(via The Martell Agency)

LAST TO EAT, LAST TO LEARN is the remarkable memoir of Pashtana Durrani, a 23-year-old Afghan woman, who has pursued her passion for educating the “disappearing girls” of the remote, contested rural tribal regions, amidst all the turmoil, violence and oppression that has enveloped her country – and her family — over a generation.

Pashtana Durrani was the first recipient of a grant from Malala’s Fund, and the founder of Learn NGO, an organization that was ruthlessly targeted by the Taliban. She conceived and developed a brilliant program for getting educational materials directly into the hands of girls and young women in the form of solar-powered tablets preloaded with lessons for grades K-12.

Pashtana escaped from Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover and will soon be in the U.S., with a two-year residency at Wellesley College to continue her critical work for girls’ education. Malala wrote one of two letters to the U.S. government to petition for Pashatana’s safe evacuation to the U.S. Pashtana is a highly sought-after expert in the on-going international advocacy struggles, a figure of hope and promise for all those determined not to cede ground in the battle for women’s education and autonomy in Afghanistan and beyond.

Tamara Bralo is an award-winning journalist who worked for BBC, CNN, and Al Jazeera English, and spent years covering war zones around the world, including Iraq, Libya, and Syria.

A NEW CAPITALISM de Seth Levine et Elizabeth MacBride

A NEW CAPITALISM by Seth Levine and Elizabeth MacBride is a provocative and optimistic look at the next stage of capitalism.

A NEW CAPITALISM
A Realist’s Guide to the Next Golden Age
by Seth Levine and Elizabeth MacBride
Matt Holt Books, 2025
(via The Martell Agency)

A NEW CAPITALISM will explore what many experts consider to be a “turning point” in capitalism, a profound shift away from neo-liberalism and a profit-above-all mentality in corporate thinking and practice to systems where companies are becoming more responsible to their countries, employees, and communities. This new way of governance is happening right now and is not driven by altruism but is the natural outcome of vast technological innovation, the effects of the climate crisis and changing social norms. It is the authors’ contention that this re-imagining, will unleash a period of wealth generation and shared prosperity and is emblematic of capitalism’s essential dynamism and ability to reconfigure itself.

Because of their standing and thus exceptional connections, the authors have conducted extensive and invaluable interviews with over 50 the global business leaders, including Jamie Dimon, Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan, Larry Fink, co-founder and CEO of BlackRock and Dick Parsons, former chairman and CEO of Time Warner and Citibank, who will provide compelling insights and often visionary thinking, almost no readers otherwise would be privy to. Challenging the perspectives of the right and the left, the book will examine the emerging consensus about the role these large companies should play and the benefits to the long-term health of businesses that are possible. It’s critical that the authors write from the perspective of business owners themselves, bringing pragmatism and level-headedness to a discussion that is often paralyzed with rigid ideological posturing.

Seth Levine, a partner and co-founder at Boulder, CO-based Foundry Venture Capital, is one of the world’s leading venture capitalists. In addition to his work at Foundry, Seth actively supports entrepreneurs around the country and across the world, serving as an advisor to funds and companies throughout the United States, Africa, and the Middle East. In 2016 Seth co-founded Pledge 1% – an international organization that encourages startups to give back to their local communities through gifts of equity, profit, product, and time.

Elizabeth MacBride is an award-winning business writer, speaker, and expert in the intersection of technology, finance, and economics. A former managing editor of Crain’s New York Business, her work has been featured in MIT Tech Review, Forbes, Newsweek, The Washington Post, Quartz, HBR.com, and many others. She was one of the first 12 employees of Wealthfront, the first online financial advisor. A regular contributor to CNBC and Forbes, she is the founder of New Builders Dispatch, which focuses on leveraging finance to create a fairer world. Elizabeth has reported on business, economics, and entrepreneurship around the world, from New York City to Gaza, to Northern Idaho, to Cambodia.