An enchanting cabinet of curiosities.
A loose history of the bathysphere that’s imbued with the adventurous spirit of science and exploration.
Designed by diver and inventor Otis Barton in the late 1920s, the bathysphere was a spherical, submersible, windowed chamber that allowed scientists to observe marine life in their natural environment. From 1930 to 1934, Barton and the naturalist William Beebe performed record-setting dives off Nonsuch Island in Bermuda, exploring depths and seeing luminescent, phantasmagoric fish that had never before been recorded. While centered on the Nonsuch dives, the book unfurls its tentacles to adopt a strange new form, caught between a biography of Beebe, a collection of oddball anecdotes, and a meditation on the pursuit of knowledge. Fox, author of the novel To Remain Nameless, eschews a traditional chronology for a more constellation-shaped story, jumping among interrelated vignettes. For example, the author connects Beebe’s 1925 adventure aboard the ship the Arcturus to a 1930s production of King Kong (the co-director was coincidentally aboard the Arcturus and likely drew inspiration from Beebe’s exploits). Elsewhere in the book, Beebe visits a friend during a hurricane, which prompts Fox to recount the strange-but-true story of Dr. James Barry, who was born female in 1789 but lived and worked their whole life as a man. Some readers may be frustrated by Fox’s vaguely connected tangents and wish instead for a more linear history, but there’s a method to his pacing. Beebe believed “no action or organism is separate” and that all of life was “underwritten by the same natural forces.” In Fox’s words, “it was not the number of species that mattered, but how they all fit together, and to sense that, you had to feel around at the edges of things…into the immaterial meaning of things.” Fox seeks to not just tell Beebe’s story, but to embody his philosophy, and he explores the vast potential of storytelling and searches its depths for glimmers of life and connectivity.
An enchanting cabinet of curiosities.Pub Date: May 16, 2023
ISBN: 9781662601903
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Astra House
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2023
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.
A charming bird journey with the bestselling author.
In his introduction to Tan’s “nature journal,” David Allen Sibley, the acclaimed ornithologist, nails the spirit of this book: a “collection of delightfully quirky, thoughtful, and personal observations of birds in sketches and words.” For years, Tan has looked out on her California backyard “paradise”—oaks, periwinkle vines, birch, Japanese maple, fuchsia shrubs—observing more than 60 species of birds, and she fashions her findings into delightful and approachable journal excerpts, accompanied by her gorgeous color sketches. As the entries—“a record of my life”—move along, the author becomes more adept at identifying and capturing them with words and pencils. Her first entry is September 16, 2017: Shortly after putting up hummingbird feeders, one of the tiny, delicate creatures landed on her hand and fed. “We have a relationship,” she writes. “I am in love.” By August 2018, her backyard “has become a menagerie of fledglings…all learning to fly.” Day by day, she has continued to learn more about the birds, their activities, and how she should relate to them; she also admits mistakes when they occur. In December 2018, she was excited to observe a Townsend’s Warbler—“Omigod! It’s looking at me. Displeased expression.” Battling pesky squirrels, Tan deployed Hot Pepper Suet to keep them away, and she deterred crows by hanging a fake one upside down. The author also declared war on outdoor cats when she learned they kill more than 1 billion birds per year. In May 2019, she notes that she spends $250 per month on beetle larvae. In June 2019, she confesses “spending more hours a day staring at birds than writing. How can I not?” Her last entry, on December 15, 2022, celebrates when an eating bird pauses, “looks and acknowledges I am there.”
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780593536131
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A charming, thoughtful pleasure for any animal lover.
A celebration of animal companions, mammalian, reptilian, avian, and otherwise.
The Ulysses S. Cat of NPR commentator Simon’s title was a “chunky orange Scottish Fold with endearing floppy ears and a broad, flat face that looked…as if he had been running full steam after a mouse when a door opened and…splat!” He may not have been the most photogenic of critters, but he was a steadfast companion to Simon’s mother and stepfather as the latter suffered illness and death. Other creatures populate Simon’s pages: a betta named Salman Fishdie, a grasshopper named Hoppy, many dogs and cats. Simon ranges widely to collect his stories; among the most affecting is a portrait of the people of Sarajevo under siege by Serbian forces, punctuated by an impatient colleague’s saying to Simon, “I do not want to get shot while doing a fucking pet story.” A good point, that, but Simon is emboldened and moved by the Sarajevans’ and U.N. soldiers’ care for pets displaced from their homes. “In making room for animals at the lowest times of their lives,” he writes, “Sarajevo showed the world real humanitarian aid.” In a somewhat lighter turn, Simon voices the hope that the afterlife will involve meeting again with all the animals and people we have loved, with no hard distinction drawn between birds, dogs, cats, turtles, and other beloved animal companions and other members of one’s family, biological and elective. While recognizing that animals make us better humans, holding unconditional love but eschewing grudges, Simon also decries the misuse of animals, particularly in laboratory settings where other modeling methods can be used that do not visit pain and death on such creatures as chimpanzees and white rats. Writes Simon, meaningfully, “Someday, I’m pretty sure we’ll look back on our use of animals in this way as something brutal.” Amen.
A charming, thoughtful pleasure for any animal lover.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9781324117186
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
