You wouldn’t want to be a member of the captive-bred wildlife population in this country, even in a zoo. Chances are, as investigative journalist Green carefully charts out, you would wind up in a small enclosure, there to be shot for “sport.” Exotic animals fascinate and delight us, and we are willing to pay to see our favorite charismatic fauna, the tigers and elephants and pandas. We enjoy the bizarre as well, the white-tailed gnus and the addax. We also like them young or very old, and zoos have found themselves with an overabundance of middle-aged animals: “There is, in short, no place for them, and they are of real worth only when disassembled.” Skins make rugs, paws are nibbled as delicacies; whole animals find themselves in everything from exotic-animal hunting operations to ratty, vermin-infested roadside/nightclub venues. Feel the urge to shoot a Nubian ibex? Got a couple grand? Done. Green (along with the nonprofit Center for Public Integrity, which examines public service and ethical issues) is able to flourish his pull-no-punches style because he has done the legwork, following the arcane and nearly invisible paper trails that cast a harsh light on such venerable establishments as the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., and the San Diego Zoo, who rid themselves of unwanted, unprofitable inmates by selling them to unscrupulous dealers. Green makes it clear that heaven-sent sanctuaries like the Primate Rescue Center exist, though for each one of them there are legions of horrific places run by ethically impaired yahoos. Green also makes it clear why: captive-bred wildlife falls between the legal cracks, with the US Dept. of Agriculture only handling egregious animal welfare infringements and US Fish and Wildlife interested in international trafficking and the Endangered Species Act. No one is responsible for the captive breds, and few show any concern. What Green is talking about here is zoos” long-term commitment to the welfare of the animals they breed. But that commitment doesn’t pay, it costs, and profits—not ethics—drive the zoo business. (8 pages b&w photos) (Author tour)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1999
ISBN: 1-891620-28-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1999
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
BOOK REVIEW
Unsentimental nature writing that sheds as much light on humans as on eels.
An account of the mysterious life of eels that also serves as a meditation on consciousness, faith, time, light and darkness, and life and death.
In addition to an intriguing natural history, Swedish journalist Svensson includes a highly personal account of his relationship with his father. The author alternates eel-focused chapters with those about his father, a man obsessed with fishing for this elusive creature. “I can’t recall us ever talking about anything other than eels and how to best catch them, down there by the stream,” he writes. “I can’t remember us speaking at all….Because we were in…a place whose nature was best enjoyed in silence.” Throughout, Svensson, whose beat is not biology but art and culture, fills his account with people: Aristotle, who thought eels emerged live from mud, “like a slithering, enigmatic miracle”; Freud, who as a teenage biologist spent months in Trieste, Italy, peering through a microscope searching vainly for eel testes; Johannes Schmidt, who for two decades tracked thousands of eels, looking for their breeding grounds. After recounting the details of the eel life cycle, the author turns to the eel in literature—e.g., in the Bible, Rachel Carson’s Under the Sea Wind, and Günter Grass’ The Tin Drum—and history. He notes that the Puritans would likely not have survived without eels, and he explores Sweden’s “eel coast” (what it once was and how it has changed), how eel fishing became embroiled in the Northern Irish conflict, and the importance of eel fishing to the Basque separatist movement. The apparent return to life of a dead eel leads Svensson to a consideration of faith and the inherent message of miracles. He warns that if we are to save this fascinating creature from extinction, we must continue to study it. His book is a highly readable place to begin learning.
Unsentimental nature writing that sheds as much light on humans as on eels.Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-296881-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
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