Curious about Nature: a Passion for Fieldwork. Burt, T., and D. B. A. Thompson, editors. 2020. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, U.K. 412 pp. £69.99 (hardcover). ISBN 978-1-108-42804-0. Handbook of Citizen Science in Ecology and Conservation. Lepczyk, C. A., O. D. Boyle, and T. L. V. Vargo, editors. 2020. University of California Press, Oakland, CA, U.S.A. 313 pp. US$85.00 (hardcover). ISBN 978-0-520-28477-7. These 2 books are united by a wish to encourage more people to get outdoors to study, survey, monitor, and record the natural world. Curious about Nature is effectively a Festschrift to the Field Studies Council (FSC), a British educational charity, established in 1943. It currently operates 20 field centers across the United Kingdom, which, in Covid-free years, offer residential and nonresidential field courses to as many as 165,000 schoolchildren, older students, and enthusiastic adults. One of the book's editors, Tim Burt, a retired Professor of Geography at Durham University, is president of the FSC and editor of its journal, and the other, Des Thompson, is the FSC chairman as well as principal advisor on science and biodiversity to the government conservation agency Scottish Natural Heritage (now branded as NatureScot). Unfortunately, it is far from clear what the editors are trying to achieve and who their intended audience is. It begins with 3 chapters on the history of field sciences, which it defines as “the collection of data beyond the laboratory.” The first includes an intriguing overview of the kit used in fieldwork, from the humble notebook to the latest data loggers, but it is otherwise a rather superfluous overview of the subsequent 2 chapters on the history of biological and geoscience field studies. These are too short to serve as an academic treatise on the contribution of field studies to science, yet they assume far more background knowledge than could be expected from a general reader. The next chapter on “pioneering field heroes in the life sciences” is again too short to do its subjects justice, although it does try to mention many trailblazers. It includes a short outline on the origins of the FSC, sadly without mentioning the parallel Scottish Field Studies Association whose courses at the Kindrogan Field Centre in Perthshire, Scotland, had more of an influence on this reviewer than anything learned at university! This material will be familiar to most field scientists, who will inevitably be irritated by omissions and oversimplifications; alas, it is too superficial to inspire potential converts to field science. However, the excellent chapter on the educational benefits of out-of-classroom learning would have been better published as a standalone pamphlet and circulated among educationalists and government ministers. The meat of the book is the subsequent 45 essays, typically 3–4 pages in length, on different aspects of fieldwork, that are cast widely to include everything from studies of social interactions in the Mormon community in Utah to surveys of solar hot water systems on the roofs of Mumbai and São Paulo. Even the Mars rover, Curiosity, is suggested as a further extension of fieldwork. One author reveals that the brief for the essays was to “write about inspiring fieldwork,” but I suspect authors were not advised on whom they were writing for or why. As a result, 1 or 2 of the essays are impenetrable jargon. The Illisarvik drained-lake field experiment in the far north of Canada seems a fascinating piece of work, but I ended none the wiser about it, having struggled with the dense terminology. Similarly, I would have loved to know more about the impact of natural CO2 springs in Italy on the surrounding vegetation, but that essay only describes the experiment, not its conclusions. That said, the vast majority of these essays are wonderful, evocative pieces of writing–so much so that I cannot help feeling they deserve a wider audience to have greater impact, perhaps as a weekly series of nature notes in a newspaper. In my career as a natural history writer and broadcaster, I have had the pleasure to meet many of the authors and know they are all top enthusiasts in their subjects. For example, having been dragged at speed up the steep slopes of a corrie in the Cairngorms Mountains of Scotland by Stuart Rae in search of Snow Buntings (Plectrophenax nivalis), I am not surprised that he had the determination to complete a marathon survey, which he writes about with typical verve, that has now accumulated 515 nest records of supremely camouflaged Tawny Frogmouths (Podargus strigoides) in 1200 ha of woodland near his new home in Canberra, Australia. Having spent time in the field with the arch-enthusiast Peter Marren, it is no surprise that he writes a truly intriguing piece about his “date with the devil,” in this case the elusive Devil's bolete fungus (Rubroboletus satanas), and, knowing Scottish ornithologist Roy Dennis, I can only concur that “fieldwork is the bedrock of [his] being.” I share a kindred spirit with John Birks who, like me, was inspired by field courses at Malham in Yorkshire, England, and Abisko in Arctic Sweden, and I would love to have gone on one of Peter Higgins’ field courses on the island of Rum in Scotland, which sounded fascinating. The various authors produce too many memorable quotes to reproduce here, but I especially like Jane Reid's description of fieldwork as an assault on the senses and emotions, “a battle between triumph and disaster, fluctuating from sublime to truly foul and back again, via the ridiculous.” Many of the authors focus on the character-building conditions inevitably encountered in remote areas, whether it is the cold, barren landscape of Ellesmere Island in the Canadian high arctic or the scorching heat in the Grand Canyon of Colorado, where the first morning task was shake from shoes the scorpions who took up residence overnight. David Harper writes about the nerve-jangling landing of a Twin Otter plane in the Sirius Pass of West Greenland, after which the priority was to repair the airstrip so the plane could take off again with accumulated specimens. Several writers pay tribute to mentors who inspired them early in their careers, and, to judge from the quality of their writings, I am sure many of them, in turn, have inspired their juniors. Several express concern that fieldwork is increasingly demoted in favor of microstudies in the laboratory or the use of aerial photographs and satellite imagery in place of field observations (department heads regard those as cheaper and less challenging to the twin gods of Health & Safety). For all its flaws, this book should do a lot to redress the balance in favor of what the editors call “real world learning.” It should be in the library of every natural or Earth science department to inspire and motivate the next generation of field naturalists. But I would also urge the editors to take the best of the essays (I scored 30 of them with 4 or 5 stars, and others could be improved with editorial guidance) and repackage them, with lots of color photographs and an introduction by some media personality, into an inexpensive, mass-media paperback that can inspire a wider readership to get out and contribute to the study of the natural world around them. Knowing the topic of Handbook of Citizen Science, I checked how many times the term citizen science appears in Curious about Nature: just twice in 312 pages of essays by fieldwork practitioners. The editors, however, use it 11 times in the introductory chapters in an attempt to align the book with prevailing political mores. It is not a term I like, perhaps because the word citizen seems to be associated most often by duties or responsibilities, without even the mythical compensation of making a citizen's arrest. The term only entered the Oxford English Dictionary in 2014, yet it describes the engagement of amateurs in science that has been going on for decades, arguably since the very beginnings of science. The Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland (BSBI) is currently completing work on Atlas 2020, the third edition of an atlas recording the distribution of the British and Irish flora (the first dates from 1962). The project leaders estimate that over 15 million records were collected through the project, equivalent to perhaps 30,000 person days of work. They calculate that this would have cost at least £11 million (about US$14.6 million) if carried out by paid surveyors (Stroh & Walker 2018). I do not remember the term citizen scientist having been used once during that project. I regard the atlas recorders simply as damn good amateur botanists. Quite a few also happen to be professional botanists or professional scientists in other disciplines, notably medicine. However, I suspect most of their records were collected out of work time, so they were still amateurs in the best sense of an enthusiast who practices something for the love of it. Against that background, I therefore approached the Handbook of Citizen Science in Ecology and Conservation with some trepidation. Sadly, it was justified because I cannot remember another book that has annoyed me quite so much but was not written by a politician. The book is entirely American-focused, and, if it truly reflects the state of science in the United States, then that is even more parlous than I believed. Despite occasional protestations to the contrary, the book presents a top-down approach of professional academics designing projects in which citizens contribute as menial laborers. On page 3, it states that the authors avoid using the term volunteer for project participants “to avoid the view that citizen science is free,” but that is the book's fundamental failing. I think it is important always to remember that the participants do donate their labor; it is vital, therefore, to ensure that they are properly rewarded – by recognition, respect, support, confidence building, satisfaction, comradeship, and even fun. The book describes citizen science as “a powerful approach to answering questions and educating the public,” which it undoubtedly is, but it must be a participative approach, with the academics learning from the amateurs too. This biased approach shows through, for example, in chapter 2 on the history of citizen science, in which the authors portray John Ray and Carl Linnaeus as “non-trained scientists.” In fact, they were self-trained scientists, probably with a far wider perspective on their work than most of the professional academics who contributed to this book. Chapter authors do recognize that many of ecology's most important and widely used data sets, on phenology, breeding bird distribution, bird migration, population dynamics, and much more, come from what I would call public participation programs – citizen science projects if you insist. They grudgingly admit that “a surprising number of historical citizen science datasets are documented reasonably or very well, and include high-quality data.” I suggest that is because amateur scientists know that they are doing – as the BSBI atlases, for example, prove eloquently. Chapter 4 considers project planning and design. The authors offer sound advice relevant to any science project, rather than tailoring it specifically to those with volunteer input. But the overcomplex diagram showing a proposed framework for designing and delivering a citizen science project (Fig. 4.1) glaringly betrays the book's key shortcomings. At no stage does it suggest engaging the volunteers to get their input on how to ensure safe, productive, supportive, and rewarding conditions that would help them contribute most effectively to the project. Alarmingly, in the chapter on ethics, it suggests that “in some ways, volunteers act as field technicians or as scientists who participate in data collection (etc.)… In other ways, volunteers act as research subjects.” The second option might include investigating whether surveyors work better alone or in pairs, which is a valid part of project refinement. But, a later chapter notes that “an often desired goal of many citizen science programs is to foster perceptual or behavioural changes in volunteers.” If that is the aim, then to my mind, it is no longer a citizen science project but a social science experiment. It seems to me profoundly unethical for volunteers to donate so much valuable time without being explicitly informed that they are the subject of, not assistants in, the project. The ethics chapter also notes that, during the second phase of a research life cycle, “protocols for data collection and quality assessment are piloted and refined, sometimes in conjunction with volunteers” (emphasis added). Perhaps the fact that volunteers are not automatically and invariably involved in project refinement is precisely why, as reported on page 120, “very little volunteer-collected data ever makes it to a decision-making forum.” In a poorly planned project, “participants end up sending data to a black box and may lose motivation to participate.” To be fair, the book regularly suggests ways to provide feedback and encouragement to volunteers, offering support and ensuring recognition, but it is telling that there is not a single contribution from an experienced citizen scientist. Chapter 11 reports one enthusiastic amateur scientist who recently published the results of 20 years of observations on monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus) in a peer-reviewed journal and notes, with apparent astonishment that this was “a feat she accomplished without a professional co-author.” Similar academic elitism pervades the entire book. Why on Earth was that lady not invited to provide a chapter in this book? She sounds a real champion of amateur science. Part III, in which authors engaged in specific citizen science projects report on their experiences, is much more useful and encouraging. One describes the Urban Ecology Centre that grew out of a neighborhood effort to fight crime and revitalize a neglected green space in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It recognizes that “creating and strengthening a sense of community and family” is essential for those engaged in such a project. Another reviews a reef monitoring project in California, which like so much monitoring of the marine environment would be impossible without the engagement of skilled divers who are amateur marine biologists. The most inspiring chapter is the only one that escapes the confines of the United States: a project to involve indigenous communities in biodiversity monitoring in protected areas of Brazilian Amazonia. Here, local communities nominated an individual from their community to act as their “indigenous agroforestry agent” to be paid for by the state (not a citizen science project in the usual voluntary sense). The communities decided only to monitor hunted species because these were most relevant to their survival, and they insisted that all the resulting paper records should be retained locally for community use because they had a true sense of ownership of the data. Only electronic copies were provided to the nongovernmental organizations that coordinated the project, and published findings resulting from these had to be provided to the communities. Overall, I can only recommend the final third of this book to anyone outside the United States looking for insights to support their own citizen science projects. But please, please will some far-sighted publisher commission a sequel to this book written by the true heroes of these projects – the participants themselves. This should provide first-hand guidance to academics on how to engage project volunteers in the design of projects so as to get the very best from the considerable enthusiasm, insights, commitment, local knowledge, and expertise these volunteers contribute to citizen science.