paper 0-8165-1881-5 A slow-starting but ultimately intriguing collection of natural history essays written over two decades. Zwinger (who won a Western States Book Award for Downcanyon: A Naturalist Explores the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, 1995) attributes her “nose-to-nose” interaction with nature to nearsightedness, which leaves her dependent on a hand lens. This approach lends itself well to an exhaustive exploration of her home base near Colorado’s Pikes Peak, where she lovingly records the land’s changing science and aesthetics in the drift of seasons. The first essays detail small wonders, and though she makes a case for the importance of invertebrates (which comprise almost 99 percent of all living species, she points out), it’s hard to share her excitement for the complex, tedious process for determining moth gender. The book takes off when Zwinger broadens her focus, exploring a coastal Chilean island that sheltered the real-life Robinson Crusoe, traveling to Baja to retrace the steps of 19th-century naturalist Xantu, one of the first to document the natural science of the newly opened west, and tagging along with researchers in the world’s most densely populated raptor breeding ground, Idaho’s Snake River Canyon. Whether thrusting a bare hand in a January stream to discover nymphs or shooting summer rapids on the San Juan River, she’s an intrepid explorer whose enthusiasm for travel off the beaten path is inspiring. Zwinger is at her best interpreting the rigors of serious science for the casual naturalist. Explaining the immense pleasure she derives from the meticulousness and order of collecting insects, she documents the copious note-taking and fastidious preparation required, then nails the intangible appeal of it all with an apt analogy: “I feel about insect collecting the way a trout fisherman feels about fly-fishing: it is the thereness that is important.” Lyrical, astute, passionate—an altogether charming look at the natural world. (illustrations by the author, not seen)
Pub Date: Sept. 18, 1998
ISBN: 0-8165-1880-7
Page Count: 294
Publisher: Univ. of Arizona
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
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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