A riveting narrative that provides further compelling evidence for the urgency of environmental stewardship.
How climate change and corporate irresponsibility fueled a disaster.
Making a powerful book debut, Bay Area–based Guardian journalists Gee and Anguiano draw on their extensive reporting to produce a tense, often moving narrative about the fire that destroyed the northern California town of Paradise. Drawing on interviews with hundreds of residents of Paradise and neighboring towns, public officials, first responders, and scientists, the authors reconstruct a tight chronology of events from the time the fire broke out on the morning of Nov. 8, 2018, through Nov. 25, when it was finally contained, to the weeks and months afterward, when evacuated residents sifted through the debris. The authors focus on many individuals who heroically fought the blaze and helped struggling evacuees and on many whose experiences were emblematic of the community: an elderly man who lived, with his daughter, in the house in which he grew up; a woman who had just given birth by caesarean, evacuated from a hospital tethered to an IV bag, her newborn son on a pillow on her lap; a man so disabled that he was essentially marooned in his own living room. When told to evacuate, the challenge for the town’s disabled and elderly residents “was not simply getting out of Paradise. It was getting out of their own homes.” The town’s evacuation plan proved woefully inadequate: No one had foreseen a fire that would impact the entire town, but the Camp Fire, as it became known, continually jumped firebreaks, whipped by unusual wind patterns. Downed power lines and abandoned, charred cars blocked roads; heavy smoke impeded visibility; embers—“it looked like rain coming down of red and blue,” one woman observed—ignited houses, and entire neighborhoods were quickly reduced to rubble. The fire gained notoriety as “the most expensive natural disaster of 2018” and incited anger against Pacific Gas & Electric for its inadequate oversight of its infrastructure. PG&E became “a byword for negligence and corporate greed,” and Paradise became synonymous with tragedy and resilience.
A riveting narrative that provides further compelling evidence for the urgency of environmental stewardship.Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-324-00514-8
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Jan. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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
An intriguing meditation on the nature of the universe and our attempts to understand it that should appeal to both...
Italian theoretical physicist Rovelli (General Relativity: The Most Beautiful of Theories, 2015, etc.) shares his thoughts on the broader scientific and philosophical implications of the great revolution that has taken place over the past century.
These seven lessons, which first appeared as articles in the Sunday supplement of the Italian newspaper Sole 24 Ore, are addressed to readers with little knowledge of physics. In less than 100 pages, the author, who teaches physics in both France and the United States, cogently covers the great accomplishments of the past and the open questions still baffling physicists today. In the first lesson, he focuses on Einstein's theory of general relativity. He describes Einstein's recognition that gravity "is not diffused through space [but] is that space itself" as "a stroke of pure genius." In the second lesson, Rovelli deals with the puzzling features of quantum physics that challenge our picture of reality. In the remaining sections, the author introduces the constant fluctuations of atoms, the granular nature of space, and more. "It is hardly surprising that there are more things in heaven and earth, dear reader, than have been dreamed of in our philosophy—or in our physics,” he writes. Rovelli also discusses the issues raised in loop quantum gravity, a theory that he co-developed. These issues lead to his extraordinary claim that the passage of time is not fundamental but rather derived from the granular nature of space. The author suggests that there have been two separate pathways throughout human history: mythology and the accumulation of knowledge through observation. He believes that scientists today share the same curiosity about nature exhibited by early man.
An intriguing meditation on the nature of the universe and our attempts to understand it that should appeal to both scientists and general readers.Pub Date: March 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-399-18441-3
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
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