Few books are as relevant for our time as is this one.
A tree-hugger extraordinaire offers myriad compelling reasons to admire, revere and—yes—hug the nearest trunk.
Yet this is no soft, silly paean to treedom. English biologist Tudge (The Impact of the Gene, 2001, etc.) has synthesized volumes of research and presents his resulting work with humor, passion, even panache. He opens with a playful definition, “a tree is a big plant with a stick up the middle,” but soon we are deep into the roots of the subject, learning how trees evolved and how scientists continue to try to classify them. The longest, densest section is a 150-page tour of trees, beginning with the conifers and ending with the eudicots, but making instructive sojourns among the old, the tall, the wide and the weird. He describes one flowering tree whose warm blossoms invite beetles to spend the night and have sex; in the morning, covered with pollen, they depart to spread the tree’s DNA. The author does his best in these middle pages to thin the academic underbrush, but not always successfully. The brisk pace resumes in the final part; an especially strong chapter describes how trees live—for example, how water can rise from the roots of a redwood to its lofty top. Another fascinating section deals with the social life of trees (they’ve learned, unlike humans, how to get along . . . usually) and contains a dazzling set piece about the co-evolution of figs and the wasps that feed on them. The end dovetails nicely with Al Gore’s documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. Global warming threatens trees, which don’t adapt quickly to environmental change, and without them, our own once-arboreal species becomes much more vulnerable, Tudge writes. He urges prudent forestry, increased use of wood products for large buildings and a cold, sober reassessment of the global rush to industrialize.
Few books are as relevant for our time as is this one.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2006
ISBN: 1-4000-5036-7
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2006
In this extraordinary collection, the final installment of a trilogy begun with Desert Notes (1976) and River Notes (1979), National Book Award winner Lopez (for Arctic Dreams, 1986) continues to use nature to teach us about ourselves. Each of the 12 stories in this slim volume creates a mystical world from everyday lives, depicting men and women coming up against situations with which they find themselves surprisingly unequipped to deal. As each character struggles to cope with predicaments that range from failing professions to disintegrating families to death, guidance comes from nature: the song of a wren that leads a man lost in the desert to water (``Introduction: Within Birds' Hearing''); the wildflowers that lead an estranged botanist back to his wife and daughter (``Homecoming''). Often a story revolves around a protagonist learning to let go of convention in order to hear nature. This listening can be approached directly, as when an old friend tries to convince the head of the US Fish and Wildlife Service to recognize that ``our biology is unraveling in a holocaust of extinct species'' and declare the ferruginous hawk an endangered species (``Conversation''). But Lopez does an even better job of illuminating the wisdom of nature when he offers ways of listening that are more like dreaming. For example, a wildlife biologist studying an arctic oasis learns the sorrow of modern animals when he discovers a land where only the souls of those killed properly (when the hunter prays after the kill) can come to search for new bodies (``Pearyland''), and a pack of wolverines teach an Alberta hunter why they don't want to be trapped (``Lessons from the Wolverine''). Through it all, Lopez's prose reads like poetry. His short, simple, and profound tales convey a deep respect for the environment and for the beauty of relationships, knowledge, language, and love. Haunting, seductive, and sensual.
Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1994
ISBN: 0-679-43453-4
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1994
Everything you wanted to know about the social behavior of lions, primates, naked mole rats, and more, in this engrossing East African saga by a noted field biologist. Packer's (Dept. of Ecology, Behavior, and Evolution/Univ. of Minnesota) narrative covers a two-and-a-half-month mission to Tanzania's Serengeti and Gombe National Parks and to Ngorongoro Crater. On his 16th trip to Africa, Packer and his crew follow, tag, and test the Serengeti lions for parasites. The author muses on lion sociality. Nomadic males will invade the predominantly female prides and kill all the cubs in order to father their own: ``Every lion in the world has a father who is a murderer.'' Females band together for protection against such raids and to guard against competing prides, resulting in a division of territory that he calls ``the balkanization of the Serengeti.'' Packer revisits Jane Goodall's famous primate research center on the shores of Lake Tanganyika. Braving the largest number of poisonous snakes anywhere in East Africa, he slithers through the dense jungle while baboon chasers position themselves to catch stool samples. Then Packer visits the floor of the 2,000-foot-deep Ngorongoro Crater, which teems with wildebeest, zebra, antelope, and their predators. Packer's narrative waxes eloquently about the vastness of the migrating herds across the great spaces of the Serengeti. He includes horrific tales of murderous attacks on tourists by bandits. He laments the population pressures compressing the borders of the parks and the severe depletion of wildlife by poachers. He does not suffer fools gladly, rails against the corruption and inefficiency of local bureaucracies, and quite justifiably complains about the ghastly condition of East African roads. Although he somewhat murkily invokes the spirit of Conrad, his final point is worth noting: Humans, unlike lower forms of life, are capable of improving their society. For both the general science reader and the armchair traveler, an informative and exciting safari. (13 color photos and 4 maps, not seen)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-226-64429-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Univ. of Chicago
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1994
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