A model for translating books to the small screen (iPhone as well as iPad), and at a bargain price.
Al Gore’s 2009 book proves an ideal fit for an iPad app, one of the best that we’ve seen.
Gore has been at the forefront of global environmental issues for the last 20 years. His An Inconvenient Truth (2007) famously warned that we are all in for big trouble if we continue our gas-guzzling, resource-squandering, overpopulating ways. Four years later, he seems right on the mark, even if deniers and critics have twitted Gore for living a tad unsustainably himself. Our Choice is less dire: Now that we’ve made our bed, Gore seeks a way to help us unmake it, announcing in a book-opening video that we are indeed in a crisis, but that this, like so many other crises, can be solved if good thinking is put to work. But there’s a lot of unsustainability to undo for that to happen. As the author provocatively notes in a chapter devoted to politics, “The United States is still borrowing from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to burn in ways that destroy the planet. Every bit of that’s got to change.” Fully leveraging the possibilities of multimedia, this app weds Gore’s original text to his video and audio narratives, his voice warm and engaging, a far cry from the much-lampooned stiff speechifying of old. Still photographs, many of which unfold, and graphs and charts round out the illustrations. So rich is the text, in fact, that, depending on bandwidth, it can take many hours for the app to download—so best to have the iPad plugged in. The package as a whole repays thorough exploration. The only demerit is a lack of hyperlinking, joining Gore’s text to the mountain of supporting information that is available elsewhere on the Internet, all hinted at in the extensive back-of-book sources.
A model for translating books to the small screen (iPhone as well as iPad), and at a bargain price.Pub Date: April 28, 2011
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Rodale
Review Posted Online: June 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2011
Less a sequel than an addendum, the book offers a close-up view of the Oval Office in its darkest hour.
Four decades after Watergate shook America, journalist Woodward (The Price of Politics, 2012, etc.) returns to the scandal to profile Alexander Butterfield, the Richard Nixon aide who revealed the existence of the Oval Office tapes and effectively toppled the presidency.
Of all the candidates to work in the White House, Butterfield was a bizarre choice. He was an Air Force colonel and wanted to serve in Vietnam. By happenstance, his colleague H.R. Haldeman helped Butterfield land a job in the Nixon administration. For three years, Butterfield worked closely with the president, taking on high-level tasks and even supervising the installation of Nixon’s infamous recording system. The writing here is pure Woodward: a visual, dialogue-heavy, blow-by-blow account of Butterfield’s tenure. The author uses his long interviews with Butterfield to re-create detailed scenes, which reveal the petty power plays of America’s most powerful men. Yet the book is a surprisingly funny read. Butterfield is passive, sensitive, and dutiful, the very opposite of Nixon, who lets loose a constant stream of curses, insults, and nonsensical bluster. Years later, Butterfield seems conflicted about his role in such an eccentric presidency. “I’m not trying to be a Boy Scout and tell you I did it because it was the right thing to do,” Butterfield concedes. It is curious to see Woodward revisit an affair that now feels distantly historical, but the author does his best to make the story feel urgent and suspenseful. When Butterfield admitted to the Senate Select Committee that he knew about the listening devices, he felt its significance. “It seemed to Butterfield there was absolute silence and no one moved,” writes Woodward. “They were still and quiet as if they were witnessing a hinge of history slowly swinging open….It was as if a bare 10,000 volt cable was running through the room, and suddenly everyone touched it at once.”
Less a sequel than an addendum, the book offers a close-up view of the Oval Office in its darkest hour.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1644-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 20, 2015
A quirky wonder of a book.
A Peabody Award–winning NPR science reporter chronicles the life of a turn-of-the-century scientist and how her quest led to significant revelations about the meaning of order, chaos, and her own existence.
Miller began doing research on David Starr Jordan (1851-1931) to understand how he had managed to carry on after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroyed his work. A taxonomist who is credited with discovering “a full fifth of fish known to man in his day,” Jordan had amassed an unparalleled collection of ichthyological specimens. Gathering up all the fish he could save, Jordan sewed the nameplates that had been on the destroyed jars directly onto the fish. His perseverance intrigued the author, who also discusses the struggles she underwent after her affair with a woman ended a heterosexual relationship. Born into an upstate New York farm family, Jordan attended Cornell and then became an itinerant scholar and field researcher until he landed at Indiana University, where his first ichthyological collection was destroyed by lightning. In between this catastrophe and others involving family members’ deaths, he reconstructed his collection. Later, he was appointed as the founding president of Stanford, where he evolved into a Machiavellian figure who trampled on colleagues and sang the praises of eugenics. Miller concludes that Jordan displayed the characteristics of someone who relied on “positive illusions” to rebound from disaster and that his stand on eugenics came from a belief in “a divine hierarchy from bacteria to humans that point[ed]…toward better.” Considering recent research that negates biological hierarchies, the author then suggests that Jordan’s beloved taxonomic category—fish—does not exist. Part biography, part science report, and part meditation on how the chaos that caused Miller’s existential misery could also bring self-acceptance and a loving wife, this unique book is an ingenious celebration of diversity and the mysterious order that underlies all existence.
A quirky wonder of a book.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6027-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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