An evocative, poetic account of rugged terrain, the men and animals who inhabited it, and the complex realities of...
A coming-of-age memoir that illuminates the pleasures and problems of running a conservation-oriented sheep and cattle ranch.
After college, with no clear direction for his future, Andrews took a summer job as a ranch hand on Sun Ranch, a 25,000-acre property in Montana. The ranch “straddles one of the most important wildlife corridors in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.” The farm animals cohabitated with grizzly bears, massive elk herds and, more problematically, wolves. The guiding idea of the venture “was to integrate ranching into a functional, natural ecosystem.” The reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone National Park in 1995 presented a recurring threat to the cattle and therefore the economic viability of the ranch. Park officials tracked local wolf packs with radio collars as they tracked elk. The local pack grew in numbers, and in 2003, when the elk sought higher ground, the wolves began preying on the hundreds of sheep being used for weed control. The USDA gunned them down from a helicopter, but a new wolf pack replaced them. Andrews looks back on the painful task of dealing with another pack of wolves that was picking off the cattle. The ranch was owned by a millionaire whom the author describes as “a well-intentioned conservationist and an avid fisherman.” Neither he nor Andrews, who was born in Seattle, were native to the area, but both loved it passionately. The problem was that even after combining ranching with ecotourism, the venture was a money-loser. The only way for the owner to make up the difference was to sell a portion to developers. Andrews spent a year on the ranch, toughening up in the process and finding his vocation as a writer on outdoor subjects and as a conservationist ranch manager.
An evocative, poetic account of rugged terrain, the men and animals who inhabited it, and the complex realities of sustainable agriculture.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4767-1083-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered...
The incredible true story of three Jewish women who survived the Holocaust.
Priska, Rachel, and Anka were married Jewish women in their early 20s when the Nazis took control of Europe. Like millions of other Jews, they were forced to give up their normal lives, all of their belongings, and their homes. Shuttled into ghettos and then off to one of the most notorious camps, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, they suffered through the Nazis’ increasing atrocities. But these three women all held a secret: they were pregnant. They were moved from Auschwitz and ended up in Mauthausen, another notorious death camp. With facing the most horrible conditions imaginable, all three gave birth right before the Allies accepted Germany’s surrender. In this meticulously detailed account, Holden (Haatchi & Little B: The Inspiring True Story of One Boy and His Dog, 2014, etc.) compiles an enormous amount of information from interviews, letters, historical records, and personal visits to the sites where this story unfolded. The graphic history places readers in the moment and provides a sense of the enduring power of love that Priska, Rachel, and Anka had for their unborn children and for the husbands they so desperately hoped to see after the war. Even though it occurred more than 70 years ago, the story’s truth is so chillingly portrayed that it seems as if it could have happened recently. These three women and their infants survived in the face of death, and, Holden writes, “their babies went on to have babies of their own and create a second and then a third generation, all of whom continue to live their lives in defiance of Hitler’s plan to erase them from history and from memory.”
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered through at the hands of the Nazis.Pub Date: May 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-237025-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2015
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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