An eloquent, eccentric, and precise nature memoir.
A distinguished British paleontologist offers a meticulously compiled “biography” of four acres of woodland in Oxfordshire, England.
In 2011, Fortey (Horseshoe Crabs and Velvet Worms: The Story of the Animals and Plants that Time Has Left Behind, 2012, etc.) became the owner of a parcel of land known as Grim’s Dyke Wood. Eager to recapture the wonder of childhood, he soon began keeping a journal of the “diverse moods and changing seasons” of a place that, from the beginning, had felt like home. Fortey’s more scientific aim was to understand how the natural world had come to be so varied. For a year, the author wrote a month-by-month account of the flora and fauna of Grim’s Dyke Wood. The book begins in April, when “a sea of bluebells” and other flowers began to carpet the ground in colorful splendor. As spring moved into summer, pale, smooth-barked beeches created green leafy canopies that protected a revival of insect activity. The mixture of rain with spells of hot, dry weather during the summer months created an environment that was generous in its gifts of wild cherries but also proved temporarily inhospitable to both microorganisms and small mammals. Early fall brought with it the joys of truffle and mushroom hunting. The cooler temperatures and rains of November signaled the end of reproductive cycles for spiders and other animals as well as the proliferation of unique fungi. Despite the cold and snow of winter, holly and ivy persisted and even thrived, and men came to fell trees “vying for space” or too sick to live. February brought a proliferation of mosses, which heralded new cycles of growth about to begin again. Replete with photographs, recipes for homemade concoctions like ground elder soup and nettle fertilizer, and side stories of the people, past and present, who impacted the wood, this book will appeal to environmentalists or anyone interested in a richly tapestried natural history of south central England.
An eloquent, eccentric, and precise nature memoir.Pub Date: Dec. 7, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-87575-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2016
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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