An informative examination and celebration of the beautiful and endangered Colorado River and its importance for people and...
Showalter, a Colorado-based conservation photographer, makes a plea to conserve the most important water resource in the American West.
Often called “the lifeblood of the American West,” the Colorado River system, spread across seven states in the United States and two in Mexico, supplies the water for more than 40 million people and the farms that grow nearly all of the nation’s winter produce. The rights to use that water are dictated by a century-old agreement that, the author asserts, was seriously flawed even when written: The 1922 Colorado River Compact not only excludes Mexico and the dozens of Indigenous peoples in the region, it sets fixed rather than proportional shares—and those shares are based on a larger amount of water than ever actually existed in the watershed. With climate change driving the worst drought in 1,200 years and population growth exacerbating an unsustainable demand for its water, the Colorado is shrinking fast, and the reservoirs behind its dams are at historic lows. If the river and its tributaries dry up, the consequences for the people and wildlife that rely on the watershed will be catastrophic. Moving from the headwaters in Wyoming through the mountains of Colorado and the canyonlands of Utah and Arizona to the now-dry delta on the Gulf of Mexico, he highlights seven distinct ecosystems and the dedicated people working to conserve them, discussing the regions’ intrinsic and economic value, the challenges they face, and potential solutions. Showalter combines lyrical descriptions (“This meadow is a place to daydream, to whisper to the cow moose munching willow, to have a chat with chattering magpies…”), personal experiences, and the stories of key experts—some in their own words—to vividly portray the beauty and diversity of the lands along the river’s 1,450-mile journey. The book’s crisp, elegant design showcases more than 160 of the author’s photos, from songbird portraits to aerial views, as well as several colorful maps. Detailed captions, often excerpts from the text, accompany each image.
An informative examination and celebration of the beautiful and endangered Colorado River and its importance for people and wildlife.Pub Date: April 15, 2023
ISBN: 9781680516326
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Braided River
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.
A coffee-table book celebrates Michelle Obama’s sense of fashion.
Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, Obama’s chatty latest book begins with some school portraits from the author’s childhood in Chicago and fond memories of back-to-school shopping at Sears, then jumps into the intricacies of clothing oneself as the spouse of a presidential candidate and as the first lady. “People looked forward to the outfits, and once I got their attention, they listened to what I had to say. This is the soft power of fashion,” she says. Obama is grateful and frank about all the help she got along the way, and the volume includes a long section written by her primary wardrobe stylist, Koop—28 years old when she first took the job—and shorter sections by makeup artists and several hair stylists, who worked with wigs and hair extensions as Obama transitioned back to her natural hair, and grew out her bangs, at the end of her husband’s second term. Many of the designers of the author’s gowns, notably Jason Wu, who designed several of her more striking outfits, also contribute appreciative memories. Besides candid and more formal photographs, the volume features many sketches of her gowns by their designers, closeups on details of those gowns, and magazine covers from Better Homes & Gardens to Vogue. The author writes that as a Black woman, “I was under a particularly white-hot glare, constantly appraised for whether my outfits were ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate,’ the color of my skin somehow inviting even more judgment than the color of my dresses.” Overall, though, this is generally a canny, upbeat volume, with little in the way of surprising revelations.
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593800706
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
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