The Genius Bat is a well written and engaging monograph on bats by Dr. Yossi Yovel. Due out 7th Oct 2025 from Macmillan on their St. Martin's imprint, it's 320 pages and will be available in hardcover, audio, and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats.
Bats (and the folks who study them, often obsessively) are interesting. Misunderstood and historically often maligned, Dr. Yovel presents engaging, often compelling, and enlightened current field research. He writes methodically, and peppers the facts and science with his notes and experiences.
The book is arranged thematically: bats social structure and interactions with other bats, echolocation and neurobiology, evolution, and conservation. Although this is a book full of natural history and science, it's written in layman accessible everyday language and is easily understandable. It's not annotated (sadly) and although there's an index, there's no bibliography or links for further reading.
The book's emphasis is on a field scientist's experiences in his travels, on professional interactions and social encounters, and much less about *bats*. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it is noticeable. For readers who are interested in the day-to-day existence of a neuroscientist and researcher in the wild, and less invested in learning a lot about bats, this is an engaging read. Some offhand comments about local social interactions, real-world political conflicts, and professional alliances and feuds in the relatively rarefied world of field ecology will leave some readers confused/repulsed.
Three and a half stars. There *are* some entertaining nuggets to be gleaned; they're scattered in the disconnected narrative.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes
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