Page-turning stories of creatures most of us despise, mostly undeservedly.
Brookshire, the host of the podcast Science for the People, begins her excellent natural history in a beautiful Indian temple filled with perhaps 25,000 common rats. According to the local religion, these rats are reincarnated people, so they are fed, cared for, and worshipped. Chronicling her travels around the world to interview experts, the author delivers fascinating accounts of a score of widely deplored pests, from the no-brainers (rats, mice, pigeons) to the controversial (snakes, deer, raccoons) to a few shockers. Readers may be surprised to learn that pigeon was once a major food source. City dwellers raised them on roofs and in backyards. After World War II, cheap supermarket chicken took over, and the pigeons were released to thrive on the streets. The first recorded description of pigeons as “rats with wings” came in 1966. Few consider cats to be drivers of environmental problems, but “feral, stray, and outdoor domestic cats together slaughter one to four billion birds and six to twenty-two billion mammals every year in the contiguous United States.” Worldwide, they are the leading cause of animal extinction, especially on islands, including Australia, where cats are officially designated pests. As Brookshire shows throughout, the concept of a pest is in the eye of the beholder. “Rats are disgusting because humans are,” she notes. They thrive on human garbage and sewage, and we are too lazy to seal our trash and too cheap to pay the taxes to build rat-free infrastructure and housing. Elephants are magnificent, but they destroy crops and kill a surprising number of people. “Between 2014 and 2019, 2,398 people died in India—trampled and torn apart by elephants.” Though humans are voracious predators, when we encounter a “pest,” we feel like prey. In the insightful conclusion, Brookshire emphasizes that we must give up some power, tolerate occasional inconvenience, and acknowledge that there are some things we cannot control.
Outstanding, possibly mind-changing natural history.Pub Date: Dec. 6, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-309725-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 24, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2022
Categories: NATURE | SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY | HEALTH & FITNESS
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The dean of fly-fishing turns in another celebration of the free, unfettered life spent working a quiet stream.
Though Gierach confesses to enjoying a good practical joke, he allows that sometimes—as with the case of an errant rubber snake—they go a bit too far. Moreover, they can lead to a bad-karma jinx. “At a certain age,” he writes sagely, “you’ve made so many dumb mistakes that you’re able to identify the kind of faulty thinking that leads up to them.” Snake stowed away, his fishing game immediately improved, and he notes that “although fishing is no longer really about success, catching fish is still somehow right at the heart of the game.” The author catches fish with the best of them, and in this collection of sketches, he takes us to some fine waters—perhaps the most inviting of them in Alaska, where he found gigantic rainbow trout and the little-known sheefish. “They’re good to eat, but they don’t freeze well for shipping, so few outside Alaska have ever tasted one,” he writes. The more remote the stream, the better, and the more knowledgeable the angler, the better as well. On that note, Gierach opines on the best flies for different occasions, such as the Turle knot that he whipped up on a New Brunswick salmon river only to have his Mi’kmaq guide study it “from every angle,” then retie it “with a Turle knot that, I thought, looked exactly like mine” but that yielded success in the form of two fish. The author also describes bespoke fishing rods and the excellence that underlies their making as well as the need for an angler to know how to read weather and avoid unnecessary danger. On that note, Gierach, ever self-effacing and pleasantly conversational, confesses to good luck, dodging both fires and deadly floods through both caution and dumb luck.
Just the thing for any fan of fly-tying and artful casting.Pub Date: March 21, 2023
ISBN: 9781501168659
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2023
Categories: NATURE | SPORTS & RECREATION | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | SURVIVORS & ADVENTURERS
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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. 2, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | NATURE | SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
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