A sterling examination of a national obsession that tracks the finds as well as the futilities of more than 60 years of...
Heroism tinged with scandal, high adventure beset by unbearable suffering—Great Britain’s 19th-century obsession with finding a Northwest Passage to Asia had it all.
National Geographic Adventure books editor Brandt (The People Along the Sand: Three Stories, Six Poems, and a Memoir, 2001, etc.) traces the European notion of a fabled Northwest Passage back to roots both documented and apocryphal. The author focuses on the second decade of the 1800s as England, flushed with victory in the Napoleonic Wars, was confidently anticipating the accretion of empire. While not an immediately exploitable resource given maritime capabilities, proof of a Northwest Passage would still be Britain’s “gift to the world.” Throughout the book, Brandt offers a wealth of reasoned detail, including his observations about less high-blown motivations. Hundreds of former seamen, pressed into service to defeat the French, now clogged the streets and public houses of port cities and towns, a public nuisance bordering on a menace to society. The Royal Navy needed a new mission. The architect was Sir John Barrow, Second Secretary to the Admiralty and as such both strategist and operations director for Arctic explorations. Barrow sent renowned captains and explorers like John Ross on missions to the deadly ice pack, then published scathing anonymous reviews of their pusillanimity and failure to push harder toward the ultimate goal. One by one they sailed and failed—Ross, William Edward Parry and others. Sir John Franklin, who became known by Brandt’s book title, was the ultimate tragic hero, taking 120 men to their deaths in 1848 by disease, freezing and starvation after their ships were captured and crushed by ice. Conclusive evidence later showed that the party’s final hours were marked by incidents of cannibalism.
A sterling examination of a national obsession that tracks the finds as well as the futilities of more than 60 years of harrowing Arctic exploration.Pub Date: March 4, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-307-26392-6
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: April 9, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Despite its glaring absence of women philosophers, Grayling’s accessible omnibus will provide a steppingstone for the...
A magnificent recapping of the history of philosophy, as it stands apart from theology, in the classic model of Bertrand Russell, as “an invitation and an entrance.”
In the hands of British scholar and journalist Grayling (Master/New Coll. of the Humanities; Democracy and Its Crisis, 2018, etc.), it is a delight to engage in this sweeping history of the great thinkers throughout the ages, from pre-Socratics to the present. Moreover, in the last section of the book, the author offers a considerably shorter yet fair introduction to Indian, Chinese, Arabic-Persian, and African philosophy (hindered only by the “veil” of language, yet he ends with a challenge to readers to address this surmountable difficulty). The attempt to “make sense of things” has plagued humanity for centuries and has also led to its great advances, especially the “rise of modern thought” in terms of empiricism and rationalism as they gained momentum from the 17th century. These great forces unharnessed philosophy from the strictures of religion, culminating in the essential concept, particularly by Immanuel Kant and his fellow Enlightenment thinkers, that the “autonomy” of man meant “self-government, independence of thought, and possession of the right and the responsibility to make choices about one’s own life.” As Grayling notes, this is “essential to the life worth living,” a matter dear to the very “first” philosophers: Thales, who relied on observation and reason to “know thyself,” and Socrates, for whom the first great question was how to live. As he moves into the more recondite reaches of “analytic” and language philosophy of the 20th century, the author mostly keeps the narrative from becoming overly academic. Unfortunately, there is a disturbing lack of women philosophers across Grayling’s 2,500-year survey, even under the cursory rubric of “feminist philosophy.” The author’s approach is especially refreshing due to his acknowledgement that few philosophers were truly unique (even Buddha or Confucius); often what was required for lasting significance was a kind of luck and a stable of devoted followers.
Despite its glaring absence of women philosophers, Grayling’s accessible omnibus will provide a steppingstone for the student or novice.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-9848-7874-8
Page Count: 640
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2019
Not light reading but essential for policymakers—and highly recommended for the 40 million people who rely on the Great...
An alarming account of the “slow-motion catastrophe” facing the world’s largest freshwater system.
Based on 13 years of reporting for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, this exhaustively detailed examination of the Great Lakes reveals the extent to which this 94,000-square-mile natural resource has been exploited for two centuries. The main culprits have been “over-fishing, over-polluting, and over-prioritizing navigation,” writes Egan, winner of the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award. Combining scientific details, the stories of researchers investigating ecological crises, and interviews with people who live and work along the lakes, the author crafts an absorbing narrative of science and human folly. The St. Lawrence Seaway, a system of locks, canals, and channels leading to the Atlantic Ocean, which allows “noxious species” from foreign ports to enter the lakes through ballast water dumped by freighters, has been a central player. Biologically contaminated ballast water is “the worst kind of pollution,” writes Egan. “It breeds.” As a result, mussels and other invasive species have been devastating the ecosystem and traveling across the country to wreak harm in the West. At the same time, farm-fertilizer runoff has helped create “massive seasonal toxic algae blooms that are turning [Lake] Erie’s water into something that seems impossible for a sea of its size: poison.” The blooms contain “the seeds of a natural and public health disaster.” While lengthy and often highly technical, Egan’s sections on frustrating attempts to engineer the lakes by introducing predator fish species underscore the complexity of the challenge. The author also covers the threats posed by climate change and attempts by outsiders to divert lake waters for profit. He notes that the political will is lacking to reduce farm runoffs. The lakes could “heal on their own,” if protected from new invasions and if the fish and mussels already present “find a new ecological balance.”
Not light reading but essential for policymakers—and highly recommended for the 40 million people who rely on the Great Lakes for drinking water.Pub Date: March 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-393-24643-8
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Jan. 3, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
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