A bright, intriguing story of people and panthers with strong appeal for readers interested in endangered species.
How Florida’s panthers were saved from extinction.
Sleek and elusive, panthers once roamed across North America, and Native people considered them spiritual beings. By the mid-1990s, in South Florida, fewer than 30 of the wild, solitary animals survived, sustained by marshes and other habitats that withstood the onslaught of suburbs, shopping centers, and other human development. Pittman (Oh, Florida!: How America's Weirdest State Influences the Rest of the Country, 2016, etc.) has been covering these predators—the state’s official animal—for 20 years at the Tampa Bay Times, where he is an award-winning reporter. In this lively, funny, detailed account of the Florida panther’s brush with oblivion and the madcap human efforts to rescue it, the author writes as an authority on both the animals and the uniquely Floridian men and women who have decided their fate. The humans are drawn out of Florida central casting. They include a wealthy playboy/scientist, a retired showman, a Santa Claus look-alike biochemist, and two former Detroit bootleggers. One biologist, known as “Dr. Panther,” threw things off with flawed habitat research; a wildlife biologist’s whistleblower suit corrected that. Veterinarian Melody Roelke’s use of an electro-ejaculator to collect panther semen revealed the panthers’ low genetic diversity. Drawing on dozens of interviews, Pittman weaves together stories of panther hunts, court cases, scientific rivalries, and political mischief to describe the activities of humans while panthers were being run over regularly in highway traffic. Experts argued over ways to help the cats; wildlife officials kept approving expanding development in prime panther habitat, such as the town of Ave Maria, brainchild of the founder of Domino’s Pizza. Pittman clearly traces important events, from failed efforts at captive breeding to the introduction of eight female Texas cougars to reinvigorate the panther gene pool and mitigate inbreeding problems. As a result, the panther population has grown to more than 200 today.
A bright, intriguing story of people and panthers with strong appeal for readers interested in endangered species.Pub Date: Jan. 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-335-93880-0
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Hanover Square Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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