Decline. Dieback. Pandemic. Call it what you will, things are rotten in the American forest—namely, the trees—cautions this enthralling, terrifying study of our sylvan predicament. ``In the dim light of the summer forest, I felt a sense of uneasiness,'' notes Little (Hope for the Land, 1992). It gets much worse. From the East Coast to the West Coast (and Europe and everywhere), trees are dying wholesale. The author strongly suggests that behind each wooded ill lies the hand of humankind: Acid rain levels red spruce in the Northeast; fire suppression along Colorado's Front Range encourages the spruce budworm to do its nasty work; the introduction, through human accident, of the gypsy moth leads to the pleasures of DDT as an antidote; clear- cutting has catastrophic, rippling consequences, with two standing trees dying for every one cut due to blowdown and disease; internal combustion engines permanently remove sugar maples from the woods (not to mention maple syrup from the breakfast table). Little interviews plant pathologists and entomologists in each case, plumbing for the causes behind the effects. Comparing their findings with politicized, compromised, state-sponsored reports, he encounters one instance after another of sidestepping, obfuscation, and downright misrepresentation of facts on the part of the government. Little knows well what must be done: Reduce fossil fuel use, stop clear-cutting, end the release of CFCs, control population. But such massive mind-set changes don't come overnight, and he fears the forest may be beyond such remedial actions. To say that the fate of the woods looks gloomy to Little is to put it mildly. He doesn't mind being branded an alarmist, for it is an alarm that he wishes to spread. Biting and eloquent. A book that should make the current surge of environmental glad-tiders sit back and reconsider. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-670-84135-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
It may come as a surprise that there are still scientific dissenters from Darwinism, but here's the proof, in a book that calls on biologists to put organisms, not molecules, at the center of the science. Goodwin (Biology/Milton Keynes College, England) begins with the proposition that specifying the chemical composition of a substance tells us nothing about its form: graphite, diamonds, and fullerenes all consist of pure carbon but differ radically in shape. Similarly, where many biologists assume that the makeup of an organism's DNA tells them all they need to know about it, Goodwin brings to the table the disciplines of physics and mathematics. He applies the insights of chaos theory to the activity of an ant's nest and to children's play, to the growth of slime molds and algae, and to fibrillation in the human heart. An older mathematical discovery, the Fibonacci series (in which each new number is the sum of its two immediate predecessors), appears to play a role in the position of leaves on a branch, as well as in the structure of quadruped limbs. But as important as his specific illustrations of his points is his contention that Darwinism has taken on a rhetoric not dissimilar to the Puritan ethic, with each organism struggling to overcome a harsh world and become fitter. Eventually, he believes, Darwinian natural selection will be seen as part of a larger physical and mathematical structure, in which the entire organism, as opposed to its DNA alone, is seen in context. In the concluding chapter, he cites several biologists who are working toward a comprehensive new biology, in which the rights of organisms and of nature are set against the claims of genetic engineering and other forms of meddling with the environment. An often exciting look at frontiers of biology beyond the well-tilled fields of gene research. (68 b&w illustrations, not seen)
Pub Date: Nov. 2, 1994
ISBN: 0-02-544710-6
Page Count: 243
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1994
A timely, comprehensive, and often interesting argument that the most pressing issue the Middle East faces is not land and borders but rather the supply and distribution of the region's water. A soil scientist with extensive consulting experience throughout the world, Hillel (Plant and Soil Science/Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst; Out of the Earth, 1990) reveals how, in one of the world's most strategic and parched areas, ecological considerations, particularly concerning water supplies, may influence geopolitics as much as summit meetings, police forces, and arms build-ups. Hillel focuses on the region's four great rivers: the Nile, the Tigris, the Euphrates, and the Jordan. He shows how a 1967 dispute between Israel and Syria over water rights was a contributing cause to the Six-Day War; how Iraq and Syria nearly came to blows with Turkey in 1990 over distribution of water from the Euphrates; and how there has been considerable tension between Jordan and Saudi Arabia over an aquifer (a water-bearing layer of permeable rock and a rare geological feature in the arid Middle East) from which both desert kingdoms draw. Hillel also suggests ways that nations can avoid disputes through intercountry and regional agreements, and he proposes various means of increasing water supplies and assuring effective use—e.g., desalination, cloud seeding, drip irrigation, and improved transmission (pipeline leakage wastes fully half the water intended for some Middle Eastern cities). This is an impressively interdisciplinary study that combines insights from geology, archaeology, etymology, biblical and other ancient Near East studies, modern history, soil science, agronomy, ecology, and contemporary political analysis. At times, Hillel floods the reader with highly technical data that will interest only hydrologists or other specialists. Generally, however, this is a clearly written, often colorful, accessible, and useful work of regional studies.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-19-508068-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1994
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