Like two women wearing the same new dress to a wedding, publishers can release books on the same subject at the same time. It doesn't matter who brought the dress first. The wedding must go forward.

Replete with photographs from various stages of Ian McTaggart Cowan's remarkable life, Briony Penn's The Real Thing: The Natural History of Ian McTaggart Cowan (Rocky Mountain Books $30) is touted as the first official biography of "the father of Canadian ecology."; Authorized by McTaggart Cowan's family, it was completed with the support of the University of Victoria.

A pioneer of community mapping, Briony Penn of Salt Spring Island is a writer, artist and lecturer who holds a Ph.D. in geography from Edinburgh University.

9781771600705