An investigation of the ongoing destruction of rain forests in Borneo and the native species that live in them.
In 2012, esteemed nature writer Shoumatoff (Legends of the American Desert: Sojourns in the Greater Southwest, 1997, etc.), who was a founding contributing editor to Outside and Conde Nast Traveler, traveled to Borneo to visit an orangutan to study their cognitive functions. When he arrived, he was shocked to witness the wanton destruction of the forests by “large-scale multinational logging operations,” which are replacing the indigenous plants with palm trees, which produce profitable palm oil. These forests date back 130 million years, and the species of some of the flora and fauna have yet to be identified. The Wildlife Conservation Society has described the situation as “the greatest destruction of biodiversity on the planet.” By the next year, the author had an assignment from Smithsonian to return to Borneo and document the situation. This book is an outgrowth of that trip. Shoumatoff recounts the recent history of the area, beginning in World War II, when efforts were made to enlist the indigenous people in the fight against Japan. In 2000, the World Wildlife Fund took the lead in the creation of conservation areas that can only selectively be logged and replaced by palm trees. Many of the forests are already in various stages of degradation, and the discovery that they cover valuable oil reserves puts the rest in jeopardy. Local politicians are under pressure to modernize by the different tribes that inhabit the region who desire the amenities of modern life. As the author shows, the indigenous population is torn between the attractions of technology and money and their own traditional, “multiperspectivist” spiritual values.
A provocative, multilayered discussion of the imperative of saving our planet’s environmental heritage while respecting the aspirations of indigenous people.Pub Date: April 11, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-8070-7824-2
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
Categories: NATURE
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BOOK REVIEW
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
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | NATURE | SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
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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
Categories: NATURE | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | SURVIVORS & ADVENTURERS | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR
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