An astonishingly deep pool of wonders.
A wide-ranging, fascinating exploration of roads, which are “not merely a symptom of civilization but a distinct disease.”
Goldfarb’s follow-up to Eager, his award-winning book on beavers, is another illuminating, witty work. He chronicles his journeys through numerous countries with colleagues to conduct extensive field research and mixes his findings with historical research showing the effects of roads on our ecology. Pavement, he writes, “blankets less than 1 percent” of the U.S., “but its ecological influence “covers a full 20 percent.” Goldfarb sadly notes that it “has never been more dangerous to set paw, hoof, or scaly belly on the highway.” With the rise of cars and roads in the 20th century, the degrading word roadkill was born, and the deer became primary victims. The author bemoans how the “Interstate Highway System lopped off migration routes as neatly as a guillotine,” and roads with more than 10,000 vehicles per day loom as what road ecologists call “absolute barriers to most wildlife.” The sprawling Los Angeles freeway labyrinth, with its “clean as a scalpel” east-west habitat fragmentation, has disrupted practically every species, especially the mountain lion. As a result of roadkill, Goldfarb sadly notes, 21 critters, especially reptiles and amphibians, face extinction, and he reveals how the National Forest Service’s many roads have become “proxy battlegrounds in a cultural war” and how they’re working to reduce them. Excessive road noise is equally pernicious, as is excessive salt on roads. Not to be overlooked, usually on a car’s front, is the ongoing insect liquidation, but many shrubby roadsides have also become insect sanctuaries. “The necrobiome,” Goldfarb writes, “airbrushes our roadsides, camouflaging a crisis by devouring it.” Fortunately, in Europe and Canada, recent innovations in under- and overpasses have helped reduce the number of dead animals, and the author is optimistic about the roles of citizen scientists, self-driving cars, and achievements in Brazil, which “seem[s] to sit at road ecology’s forefront.”
An astonishingly deep pool of wonders.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9781324005896
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
An insistently hopeful, fact-based booster shot for a doomsaying, world-weary population.
An influential thought leader puts a positive spin on global awareness.
In his posthumous collaborative book poised to “fight devastating ignorance with a fact-based worldview,” Swedish physician, global health lecturer, and academic statistician Rosling (1948-2017) parts the dingy curtains of global pessimism to reveal an alternate and uplifting perspective on the state of world issues today. Co-written with Rosling’s son and daughter-in-law, the book effectively educates, uplifts, and reassures readers through chapters reinforced by focused, statistically sound research studies. Rosling presents 10 theoretical concepts, or “instincts,” which are basic human impulses that often cause the general public to misinterpret and hyperbolize critical information about the contemporary world. Among the behaviors he cites that drive people to manifest an “overdramatic worldview” are the tendency to divide everything into two aspects (“us vs. them,” the “developing” vs. the “developed” world), blaming one indicator for a myriad of troubles, and cultivating a negative mindset. Adding to the dynamically designed presentations of charts, images, data analysis, and personal anecdotes, the author also breaks up his succinct chapters with humor and common-sense reasoning bolstered by statistical data. Multiple choice questions on world knowledge are sure to surprise and enlighten readers curious about their own awareness levels and susceptibility to rush judgments, misconceptions, and defeatist mindsets. With unfailing optimism, Rosling administers a fact-based antidote to apocalyptic statistics like world population overgrowth, rampant infant deaths, and soaring crime rates, none of which are ballooning out of control but are fearfully perceived as such. He also examines five pressing real-world “risks” that demand attention: poverty, global warming, financial collapse, global pandemic, and a catastrophic third world war. In compelling readers to comprehend the positive aspects of world changes using practical thinking tools, Rosling delivers a sunny global prognosis with a sigh of relief.
An insistently hopeful, fact-based booster shot for a doomsaying, world-weary population.Pub Date: April 3, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-250-10781-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
Long shelved by its author, an ode to a mountain range’s mysteries proves timeless.
Nature’s pitiless grandeur.
Shepherd, a novelist, wanted to understand the “essential nature” of the Cairngorm Mountains, near her home in Scotland, but recognized that it might be “a tale too slow for the impatience of our age.” Though such feelings couldn’t sound more current, she penned them during World War II. After fleeting attempts to publish back then, she set this book aside until 1977, when a university press published it; she died in 1981. In this slightly expanded American edition, Shepherd’s perspective, which prioritizes sensory observations over geological particulars, loses none of its resonance. More hiker than climber, she begins on a lichen-lined plateau, going vertical amid “tangles of ice” on “rose-red” cliffs. Looking at a loch far below, she’s “on a mighty shelf, above the world.” Shepherd doesn’t soft-peddle nature’s ruthlessness. An eagle hunting for food is “the very terror of strength”; to stand inside a cloud is to confront a frightening void. Neither does she ignore interesting historical facts; Cairngorm forestland was first cut in the 19th century, when Scotland needed wood during the Napoleonic Wars. Mainly, though, Shepherd focuses on qualities that are beyond measure. Why do plant species largely eradicated by glaciers flourish in the Cairngorms? Did those combative stags she spotted—their antlers interlocked and unable to free themselves—battle to the death? The answers elude her, and she’s OK with that. Though very short, this book still feels padded, with a long introduction by Robert Macfarlane, first published in a 2011 Scottish edition, and a new afterword by Jenny Odell. Macfarlane, who spent part of his childhood in the Cairngorms, deems this a classic with few peers. While this might be hometown boosterism, there’s no denying that Shepherd’s prose reaches considerable heights.
Long shelved by its author, an ode to a mountain range’s mysteries proves timeless.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668066591
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Jan. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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