2023 Bernstein Prize for Nonfiction Winner

THE GENIUS BAT is part of the genre of entertaining, informative and stimulating popular science books about animals and other organisms and discoveries about their remarkable capacities. Like others in this genre, THE GENIUS BAT is not only about a particular non-human subject; it’s also about the writer and other scientists and some of their exploits.

The book is intelligent and informative, and the style is unpretentious, witty, and anecdotal.

The bat, the only flying mammal, has a good deal of associated lore, and mystery and, for more than a few of us, even initial aversion. In working with Yovel, and visiting his bat lab, we’ve gone through a kind of transformation about bats – the order Chiroptera. They are smart, and they have a sensory system – including highly-developed capacity for echolocation – that is different from ours. Being in their world gives us a glimpse not only of their unique bat-ness but also of qualities and behaviors that are meaningful to us. As Yovel describes, some bat species engage it what can best be described as altruism. Some have a spectacular mating practice known as lekking (think speed dating). And some male bats even lactate.

Rights sold:

US: St. Martin’s Press (NA); Israel: Kinneret-Zmora; Japan: Kawade Shobō Shinsha; Korea: Across