Photographer Deutsch teams up with the American Bird Conservancy and noted ornithologists in a collection of full-color photographs and essays that explore the wonder of all things avian.
A love for birds comes through clearly in this comprehensive collection. Deutsch’s plentiful, stunning photography showcases various winged beauties of the Americas, including Colombia and Ecuador’s dramatic-looking, violet-tailed sylph; the yellow Canada warbler; and the United States’ bald eagle with its impressive wingspan. This hefty guide is both a happy celebration of birds and a warning about their potential future destruction; in a foreword by Jonathan Franzen, the novelist and amateur birder warns that many birds depend on multiple habitats, so their survival depends on land conservation in more than one location. (The book opens with Margaret Atwood’s previously unpublished poem “Fatal Light Awareness,” in which the speaker mourns the death of a thrush that flew into a window.) However, an upbeat introduction, “Birds Are Amazing” by American Bird Conservancy president Michael J. Parr, reveals how the New Caledonian Crow smartly uses tools in the wild to extract grubs from rotten wood. In “The Power of Birds,” John W. Fitzpatrick, the executive director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, eloquently describes a 1970s recording of the beautiful but haunting song of a Hawaiian bird—the sole survivor of its species. In an informative essay, “Migration,” naturalists Kenn Kaufman and Kimberly Kaufman delve into how flight patterns connect the Americas. And Peter P. Marra, the director of the Migratory Bird Center at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, offers compelling, up-to-date scientific tidbits in “Migratory Connectivity,” such as the fact that flight-tracking devices can now weigh as little as 3.4 grams. In another essay, Clare Nielsen, communications VP at the American Bird Conservancy, details how black-pepper vines make wonderful habitats for birds in Guatemala. Overall, the book is brimming with bird facts, and that information can be shocking at times, particularly regarding endangered species.
A rich, gorgeously presented resource for schools and libraries.Pub Date: May 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-68051-211-3
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Braided River
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Categories: ART & PHOTOGRAPHY
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A revealing biography of the fabled Manhattan hotel, in which generations of artists and writers found a haven.
Turn-of-the century New York did not lack either hotels or apartment buildings, writes Tippins (February House: The Story of W. H. Auden, Carson McCullers, Jane and Paul Bowles, Benjamin Britten, and Gypsy Rose Lee, Under One Roof In Wartime America, 2005). But the Chelsea Hotel, from its very inception, was different. Architect Philip Hubert intended the elegantly designed Chelsea Association Building to reflect the utopian ideals of Charles Fourier, offering every amenity conducive to cooperative living: public spaces and gardens, a dining room, artists’ studios, and 80 apartments suitable for an economically diverse population of single workers, young couples, small families and wealthy residents who otherwise might choose to live in a private brownstone. Hubert especially wanted to attract creative types and made sure the building’s walls were extra thick so that each apartment was quiet enough for concentration. William Dean Howells, Edgar Lee Masters and artist John Sloan were early residents. Their friends (Mark Twain, for one) greeted one another in eight-foot-wide hallways intended for conversations. In its early years, the Chelsea quickly became legendary. By the 1930s, though, financial straits resulted in a “down-at-heel, bohemian atmosphere.” Later, with hard-drinking residents like Dylan Thomas and Brendan Behan, the ambience could be raucous. Arthur Miller scorned his free-wheeling, drug-taking, boozy neighbors, admitting, though, that the “great advantage” to living there “was that no one gave a damn what anyone else chose to do sexually.” No one passed judgment on creativity, either. But the art was not what made the Chelsea famous; its residents did. Allen Ginsberg, Bob Dylan, Andy Warhol, Janis Joplin, Leonard Cohen, Robert Mapplethorpe, Phil Ochs and Sid Vicious are only a few of the figures populating this entertaining book.
A zesty, energetic history, not only of a building, but of more than a century of American culture.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-618-72634-9
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2013
Categories: GENERAL HISTORY | ART & PHOTOGRAPHY | UNITED STATES | HISTORY
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BOOK REVIEW
Photographer and author Stanton returns with a companion volume to Humans of New York (2013), this one with similarly affecting photographs of New Yorkers but also with some tales from his subjects’ mouths.
Readers of the first volume—and followers of the related site on Facebook and elsewhere—will feel immediately at home. The author has continued to photograph the human zoo: folks out in the streets and in the parks, in moods ranging from parade-happy to deep despair. He includes one running feature—“Today in Microfashion,” which shows images of little children dressed up in various arresting ways. He also provides some juxtapositions, images and/or stories that are related somehow. These range from surprising to forced to barely tolerable. One shows a man with a cat on his head and a woman with a large flowered headpiece, another a construction worker proud of his body and, on the facing page, a man in a wheelchair. The emotions course along the entire continuum of human passion: love, broken love, elation, depression, playfulness, argumentativeness, madness, arrogance, humility, pride, frustration, and confusion. We see varieties of the human costume, as well, from formalwear to homeless-wear. A few celebrities appear, President Barack Obama among them. The “stories” range from single-sentence comments and quips and complaints to more lengthy tales (none longer than a couple of pages). People talk about abusive parents, exes, struggles to succeed, addiction and recovery, dramatic failures, and lifelong happiness. Some deliver minirants (a neuroscientist is especially curmudgeonly), and the children often provide the most (often unintended) humor. One little boy with a fishing pole talks about a monster fish. Toward the end, the images seem to lead us toward hope. But then…a final photograph turns the light out once again.
A wondrous mix of races, ages, genders, and social classes, and on virtually every page is a surprise.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-05890-4
Page Count: 432
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2015
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