A rich, compelling look at a thriving yet increasingly threatened natural resource and those who depend on it.
A writer and photographer offers a thoughtful exploration of the vital role played by salmon in Alaskan communities.
Gulick (Salmon in the Trees, 2010), whose work has appeared in Audubon and National Wildlife, follows up her preceding book with this well-reported and gorgeously illustrated volume about the intimate, complex relationship between salmon and the Alaskan people. Salmon is a gift, the author explains, and those who receive it all share a “deep connection to these remarkable fish,” though they may sometimes disagree on the best way to use and protect the prize they’ve been given. Alaska is one of the few places that still has a flourishing population of wild salmon, Gulick asserts before interviewing people whose very existence depends on the continued health of salmon runs. Some are transplants who run the sport-fishing businesses that attract tourists to America’s last frontier; others are commercial fishermen; and several are Alaska Natives who keep centuries-old traditions alive when they catch and preserve the flavorful fish. The author provides an up-close look at “the salmon way” as she ventures out on a fishing boat, travels by seaplane into the wilderness, encounters bears, and sits down for many meals as she gets to know “the salmon people of Alaska.” The result is a vivid portrait of a place that will likely be foreign to many readers; 18% of the population still harvests fish, game, and plants in order to survive. Those who embrace a subsistence way of life (either by choice or necessity) might seem poor to outsiders, but they “consider themselves the richest people in the world,” with access to the vast variety of nature’s bounty, as Gulick explains. Her conversations with those who depend on salmon deftly show how the fish are a vital link in the state’s environmental and economic systems but also how they bind families and communities together. Few who read this illuminating book or see the author’s awe-inspiring color photographs will fail to come away with a sense that this is a way of life well worth preserving.
A rich, compelling look at a thriving yet increasingly threatened natural resource and those who depend on it.Pub Date: May 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-68051-238-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Braided River
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PROFILES
A leisurely, folksy account of Serengeti days spent communing with horned ungulates. During the mid-1960s and early 1970s—while teaching at the University of Missouri, Columbia, and then at Texas A&M—Walther spent a goodly amount of time in the Serengeti National Park in East Africa doing fieldwork in the then-new science of ethology (species-specific behavior in animals), studying gazelles in particular. This short volume is the fruit of those African experiences, written at a distance of 25 years. It's the kind of monograph Sherlock Holmes would approve for its wealth of fact and observation, yet it also makes comfortable fireside reading, with its reminiscences of a tourist-free savannah and its fogyish humor. Much of the book is given over to recording the daily life of gazelles: their territorial marking walks, grazings, snoozes in the sun, flirtations, copulations, clashes with neighboring bucks, more grazings and markings, another catnap—life in the slow lane. Walther unleashes a bit of hard science when he discusses mating rituals and flight distances, alpha male roles and mass migration patterns. With obvious pleasure, he cuts the mighty simba down a notch. ``I can unreservedly agree with only one of the laudatory tributes,'' he writes. ``The lion is yellow—more or less.'' Walther was a field man of the old school: He made his own maps; kept long, hard hours; fended, alone, for himself; and was not afraid of some modest anthropomorphism. (He still isn't, referring in the text to the gazelles as ``my people'' and giving them names.) The book's only lack is a glossary; it's hard to keep straight whether a dik-dik prefers sotting within sight of a mbuga...or maybe it was a kopje. Wonderfully rich and detailed, filled with vignettes, a lovely blend of science and memoir. (41 b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: May 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-253-36325-X
Page Count: 140
Publisher: Indiana Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
Who says that wolves show no compassion, that ants are clueless when it comes to rage, that crows don't enjoy a good wheeze—in short, that animals other than humans don't have emotions—demands Masson (My Father's Guru, 1992, etc.) in this entertaining, if undefinitive, collection of soulful animal tales. Who? Well, just about everybody who thinks the scientific method is the last word, or likes to adorn him/herself in furs, or feels the need to dominate—that's who. Controversial psychoanalyst Masson (and coauthor McCarthy, a science writer) doesn't buy their hot air for a moment: The jury's still out on this question, he says, and anybody who claims the last word is full of hokum. Turning from his study of the human psyche to the psyche of animals, Masson comes up with scores of episodes where animals appear to have displayed—through gesture, act, posture, or sound- -an emotional vocabulary, and a wide one at that. The greater part of this book is given over to examples of beastly sensibilities: the tender, protective, and tolerant love of many creatures for their children (``to let them chew on you...snatch your dinner...put up with their noise...you had better love them deeply''); mourning for a lost mate, evidenced by the likes of cows and dolphins; the melancholy of a subdued, whimpering, tearful chimp; the compassion of an elephant trying to aid a mired baby rhino, despite repeated rushes from the rhino's mother. And there are a hundred more examples. In the final instance, Masson admits that these anecdotes are no more proof of animals' emotional life than are those given to deny such emotions—neither rests on the hard bed of fact. But, he argues, aren't they enough to make us reconsider our lab-testing programs or the impulse to be draped in sable? Can a bear appreciate beauty? Maybe, maybe not, says Masson. But when he hears of one apparently meditating on a colorful sunset, he's ready to give the brute the benefit of the doubt. (First serial to Cosmopolitan and New Age Journal; Book-of-the- Month Club/Quality Paperback Book Club selections; author tour)
Pub Date: May 12, 1995
ISBN: 0-385-31425-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1995
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