A formidably detailed (if inaccessible to the average reader) survey of the author’s work on human paleobiology.
This collection of Mrejeru’s articles explores the most significant moments in human evolution.
In these pages, the author covers many topics in hominin evolution, from the first appearance of hominins 5.4 million years ago to the first differentiation of the hominin brain from the monkey brain, approximately 500,000 years ago, to the first steps on the path to Homo sapiens, which Mrejeru locates at 70,000 years ago. The papers reprinted here touch on a wide array of compelling subjects, from the discussion of a 2019 study suggesting that humans may be able to unconsciously detect changes in Earth’s electromagnetic field to the possibility that noncognitive skills are deeply embedded in the neurological makeup of modern humans. The articles include copious quotes from the works of others in the field and many detailed citations, and he occasionally broadens his scope to contemplate the larger implications of his subjects (such as the perilous current state of the world, in which 96 percent of all the mammals on Earth are livestock and half of the planet’s wild animals have likely gone extinct in the last 50 years). Readers will notice immediately that Mrejeru is writing for his fellow specialists, with no effort being made to explain to non-experts the often rarefied concepts being discussed. “Both major anatomical cerebral changes were produced by the intermediation of geomagnetic events, which increased the atmospheric concentration of C14 isotopes, stimulating Reactive Oxidative Species (ROS) and associated pulses of neurogenesis,” reads a typical passage; “Hence, neurogenesis was solely responsible for producing encephalization, new cerebellar and frontoparietal structures and significant circuitry reorganizations in the brain.” Lay readers will likely get little out of such proclamations.
A formidably detailed (if inaccessible to the average reader) survey of the author’s work on human paleobiology.Pub Date: March 16, 2023
ISBN: 979-8387330315
Page Count: 207
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: June 2, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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