A cetologist chronicles her 25 field-season summers studying generations of Atlantic spotted dolphins.
Beginning in 1985, Herzing, then in her early 30s, traveled to an area in the Bahamas, a known home to families of friendly dolphins, and began tracking them, analyzing behavioral traits and the courting and mating habits of what she believes to be “one of the most advanced nonhuman intelligence on the planet.” Initially taking an anthropological approach, she quickly realized that an interactive, participatory methodology would play a more critical role in her research. So she dove in, equipped with scuba gear, cameras and a “hydrophone” for video-recording the dolphins’ highly expressive underwater vocalizations and behavior. Herzing passionately writes of her first summer cautiously immersed in the marine mammal’s world of clicks and whistles, their playtime and foreplay and in naming the dolphins and ultimately reconstructing elaborate family trees. Though it would take her five years to establish some semblance of shared trust and solace with the apprehensive dolphin pods, the many summers that followed only served to reinforce the author’s enthusiasm and perseverance for the wide-eyed observation of mothers and calves, their babysitting mystique, intricate interspecies relations (humans included) and elaborate communication coding. The author’s liberal use of “anthropomorphizing” (ascribing emotions to the dolphins) only adds to the exploration’s allure, especially when threatening elements like storms, dangerous water currents and hungry sharks enter the picture. Herzing’s fervent work became disrupted, however, by three hurricanes the 2004-5 seasons, which displaced many of the dolphins she’d been meticulously documenting. Inspired by the pioneering work of Jacques Cousteau, Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey, Herzing’s focused, captivating account concludes with moving animal-rights arguments centered around the injustices foisted upon defenseless cetaceans and the many other species senselessly killed or held in cruel captivity.
Pub Date: July 5, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-312-60896-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2011
A portrait of coal country as stark and galvanizing as Harry Caudill’s classic Night Comes to the Cumberland (1962).
Reece (English/Univ. of Kentucky) spent 2003–04 closely observing the sickly, strip-mined reaches of a mountain in Kentucky’s Appalachia; his book stands witness to its devouring.
In the old days of contour mining, excavations were carried out along ridgelines. Now the name of the game is mountaintop removal: Blast the high ground to smithereens, scavenge the detritus and plow the waste into the valley below, like so much toxic dust swept under the rug. Reece chronicles these ecological scalpings in anxious chapters written with an eye for abiding, catastrophic imagery. He does not lack material. Once a superb mesophytic forest habitat with an abundant diversity of species, a crumpled and intimate landscape of weathered peaks rich in flora and fauna, the region now resembles the buttes of the American West; pretty as they are in Arizona, they are deeply alien and a sign of trouble in the East. Creeks run orange with sulfuric acid and heavy metals; wells are polluted; the foundations of local homes have cracked; and the local population suffers from illnesses obviously related to the poisoning of the environment. Union protection for workers and citizens is a laugh, government oversight under the Bush administration is a travesty: The current Deputy Secretary of the Interior, Steven Griles, is a former coal lobbyist. Orwell and Kafka in their bleakest moments would have felt right at home in Appalachian Kentucky, mired in corruption and class warfare. Reece appreciates the need for some common ground, but is there no way, he asks, that the local economy can sustain itself without destroying the cerulean warbler and the very skyline?
A portrait of coal country as stark and galvanizing as Harry Caudill’s classic Night Comes to the Cumberland (1962).Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2006
ISBN: 1-59448-908-4
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2005
Macho prose full of praise for would-be warriors and the men who train them, seemingly designed to enthrall young men, boost...
Former Navy SEAL Couch redeploys the you-are-there approach of The Warrior Elite (2001) to depict the grueling training undergone by Army Special Forces Class 8-04.
Popularly known as the Green Berets, this elite program has a graduation rate of less than one in five. Beginning in August 2004, the author stayed for ten months at Camp Mackall in North Carolina, following the men closely as they were winnowed and hardened by the Special Forces Qualification Course and subsequent specialized training programs. First, however, Couch gives civilian readers some basic information about the mission and organization of Special Forces, a group that he believes is essential to winning the global war on terrorism. Standards are high, and candidates undergo mental and psychological screening as well as physical and professional assessment. The Green Berets, Couch stresses, are soldier-teachers who must be able to connect with and train local people to battle insurgents in their own country. Using lots of army acronyms and lingo, the veteran novelist (Silent Descent, 1993, etc.) creates an on-the-spot picture of the men’s tough, dirty and exhausting daily life. Couch not only observes and reports on the exceptionally demanding classroom- and field-training, he interviews many students and their instructors. Class members, here given pseudonyms, seem to talk freely about their reasons for being in the program and their reactions to the training; staff comments about the men (including those who leave, voluntarily or involuntarily) are also frank.
Macho prose full of praise for would-be warriors and the men who train them, seemingly designed to enthrall young men, boost recruitment and please the army.Pub Date: March 6, 2007
ISBN: 0-307-33938-6
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2006
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