Beebe is still somewhat known today, however, while Barton is not. Matsen gives him overdue recognition, even as he offers a...
For true-adventure buffs: an engrossing tale of brains, careerism, and clashing egos on the high seas.
Eighty years ago, there was no more famous pop-science writer than William Beebe. As nature-documentary producer Matsen writes, by 1926 Beebe had produced 11 books and hundreds of articles about his adventures on behalf of the New York Zoological Society, for which he was a curator of ornithology, and in doing so had acquired thousands of fans. One was a Columbia engineering student named Otis Barton, who was amazed to read that Beebe was planning a descent via a “steel cylinder” into the Atlantic deep; the cylinder’s walls were reported to be a quarter-inch thick, good for a descent of a mile or more. For the mission to succeed, however, Barton calculated that the tanker would have to be either much thicker or so heavily braced that a passenger would not be able to fit inside. Barton took his concerns to Beebe and struck a deal: Barton would pay for a bathyscaphe and accompany Beebe on a diving expedition. Beebe walked a tightrope between science and celebrity, Matsen writes, and it did not help matters that Barton was as hungry for renown as he; their diving efforts may have been less successful than either would have wished, but at least neither died—and their contraption worked. Still, Barton and Beebe fell out, with Barton complaining that Beebe hogged all the publicity and that none of the newspapers cared about his side of the story. “It wasn’t so much that Barton wanted more credit for building the Bathysphere and making the dives, though he had done all that,” writes Matsen, “but that every line of ink was money in the bank if he hoped to make a living in the movie business.” Beebe went on to other things, while Barton continued his diving experiments, both diminished by the feud.
Beebe is still somewhat known today, however, while Barton is not. Matsen gives him overdue recognition, even as he offers a cautionary tale about the price of fame.Pub Date: April 12, 2005
ISBN: 0-375-42258-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2005
In three essays based on lectures, Lewis provides an engaging overview of the cultural and political clash between Christian Europe and the Islamic world from the late 15th to the early 19th centuries. Lewis (Near Eastern Studies/Princeton Univ.; Islam and the West, 1993, etc.) takes as his starting point 1492, the year not only of Columbus's discovery of the "New World" but also of Catholic Spain's victory over Islam, after four centuries of struggle, on the Iberian Peninsula. Six months later, Ferdinand and Isabella expelled Spain's Jews, with profound repercussions for all three monotheistic civilizations. Though banished from Western Europe, it wasn't until 1683 that Muslim armies, under the flag of the Ottoman Empire, were repulsed from Vienna for the last time. In briefly tracing the millennium-long clash, Lewis demonstrates how the Christian and Islamic cultures sometimes mirrored each other, noting, for example, that the Crusade resembles a jihad and that the European Renaissance was preceded about 500 years earlier by a great Muslim cultural flowering. He writes far more briefly of Judaism, but here, too, he illuminates, as in his clear discussion of the economic and political forces that drove the Ottoman Empire to welcome the Jews expelled from Spain. Lewis's multilayered analysis of why the West ultimately gained the upper hand over the Islamic world ranges broadly from the technological (the West used gunpowder, which the Muslim world largely scorned) to the linguistic (Western Europe developed written vernaculars from Latin, which accelerated receptivity to cultural change, while the Islamic world retained the beautiful, but somewhat stilted, style of classical Arabic well into the modern era). The book is marred only by a closing, overstated paean to Western civilization, in which Lewis claims that Western thinkers alone in human history have manifested intense curiosity about cultures other than their own. Still, despite its tantalizing brevity, an elegant book.
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0195102835
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Reiger, conservation editor of Field & Stream (Wanderer on My Native Shore, 1983, etc.) offers a paean to life lived close to the land. In their early 30s, Reiger and his wife, Barbara, abandoned fast-track publishing careers in New York and Washington, D.C., to settle in a quiet backwater community of coastal Virginia. This graceful memoir is largely a response to his shocked urban colleagues who asked, ``How could you do it?'' As he and his wife restore their traditional Eastern Shore farmhouse and harvest, hunt, and fish on the 67 acres of their farm, Heron Hill (which they had purchased in 1970), he feels a growing sense of connection to the land and the people who live there. He relishes a full range of country life, from salvaging serendipitous roadkill to learning the lore of his ``born here'' neighbors. This account is dense with the detail of hedgerow planting, proper nesting-box placement, the merits of mummichogs (a kind of small fish) for bait and tree swallows for mosquito control. A close observer of nature, Reiger looks also at some of the larger lessons it has taught him: Living off the land instills self-reliance, which is the only access to wisdom; traditional gender roles are rooted in the natural world; pain is proportional to one's ability to survive. His theory of conservation is equally grounded in his farm experience. Save-the- whale rallies and rainforest fund-raisers are not for him. ``Real conservation is hands on, net gain, local habitat manipulation and species management. It's not about letting nature take its course.'' Reiger is the author of 15 books and hundreds of magazine articles, but this memoir suggests that his most satisfying creative act has been the stewardship of his own land. A deeply felt, immensely satisfying memoir.
Pub Date: Nov. 22, 1994
ISBN: 1-55821-296-5
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Lyons Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
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