A welcome addition to any tree hugger’s library.
Affectionate yet scientifically rich look at an essential ingredient of the environment.
When he and his family moved to a 10-acre spread in southeastern Pennsylvania, writes Tallamy, he noted that after decades of hay mowing, there were just a few trees and a concomitant shortage of wildlife. Enter the oak, 500-odd species of which cover the world, trees that “produce enormous root systems over their lifetimes, and these help make them champions when it comes to soil stabilization, carbon sequestration, and watershed management.” Humans need as much help as they can get in such matters, but that doesn’t keep them from felling vast forests of oaks for pasturage, fuel, and other uses. In this guided tour of a year in the life of the oaks around him, Tallamy enumerates all the useful and interesting work that they do. Homeowners, for instance, are likely to cut down oaks on their property because they’re such messy trees, leaving great piles of leaves underneath in season. Yet those leaves form an ecosystem of their own, sheltering insects, seeds, fungi, mycorrhizae, and other desirable things. When they are in mast, oak trees provide “unlimited food for acorn predators,” and oak litter helps battle invasive species on forest floors, such as Japanese stiltgrass. As the author makes clear, preserving oaks and other native tree species is an essential act in supporting migratory bird species, for those tree species, to varying degrees, produce great populations of caterpillars on which the birds feed. “Any birder worth her salt already knows where to look for spring migrants,” he exults, “look to the oaks!” There’s a biology textbook packed away inside these graceful, appreciative essays, full of notes on marcescence, the mating habits of katydids, and the urgent work of saving oaks, once “ancient cornerstones of ecosystems throughout the United States”—and indeed the world.
A welcome addition to any tree hugger’s library.Pub Date: March 30, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-64326-044-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Timber
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2021
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.
A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting.
To call Elon Musk (b. 1971) “mercurial” is to undervalue the term; to call him a genius is incorrect. Instead, Musk has a gift for leveraging the genius of others in order to make things work. When they don’t, writes eminent biographer Isaacson, it’s because the notoriously headstrong Musk is so sure of himself that he charges ahead against the advice of others: “He does not like to share power.” In this sharp-edged biography, the author likens Musk to an earlier biographical subject, Steve Jobs. Given Musk’s recent political turn, born of the me-first libertarianism of the very rich, however, Henry Ford also comes to mind. What emerges clearly is that Musk, who may or may not have Asperger’s syndrome (“Empathy did not come naturally”), has nurtured several obsessions for years, apart from a passion for the letter X as both a brand and personal name. He firmly believes that “all requirements should be treated as recommendations”; that it is his destiny to make humankind a multi-planetary civilization through innovations in space travel; that government is generally an impediment and that “the thought police are gaining power”; and that “a maniacal sense of urgency” should guide his businesses. That need for speed has led to undeniable successes in beating schedules and competitors, but it has also wrought disaster: One of the most telling anecdotes in the book concerns Musk’s “demon mode” order to relocate thousands of Twitter servers from Sacramento to Portland at breakneck speed, which trashed big parts of the system for months. To judge by Isaacson’s account, that may have been by design, for Musk’s idea of creative destruction seems to mean mostly chaos.
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9781982181284
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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BOOK TO SCREEN
Gibbins combines historical knowledge with a sense of adventure, making this book a highly enjoyable package.
A popular novelist turns his hand to historical writing, focusing on what shipwrecks can tell us.
There’s something inherently romantic about shipwrecks: the mystery, the drama of disaster, the prospect of lost treasure. Gibbins, who’s found acclaim as an author of historical fiction, has long been fascinated with them, and his expertise in both archaeology and diving provides a tone of solid authority to his latest book. The author has personally dived on more than half the wrecks discussed in the book; for the other cases, he draws on historical records and accounts. “Wrecks offer special access to history at all…levels,” he writes. “Unlike many archaeological sites, a wreck represents a single event in which most of the objects were in use at that time and can often be closely dated. What might seem hazy in other evidence can be sharply defined, pointing the way to fresh insights.” Gibbins covers a wide variety of cases, including wrecks dating from classical times; a ship torpedoed during World War II; a Viking longship; a ship of Arab origin that foundered in Indonesian waters in the ninth century; the Mary Rose, the flagship of the navy of Henry VIII; and an Arctic exploring vessel, the Terror (for more on that ship, read Paul Watson’s Ice Ghost). Underwater excavation often produces valuable artifacts, but Gibbins is equally interested in the material that reveals the society of the time. He does an excellent job of placing each wreck within a broader context, as well as examining the human elements of the story. The result is a book that will appeal to readers with an interest in maritime history and who would enjoy a different, and enlightening, perspective.
Gibbins combines historical knowledge with a sense of adventure, making this book a highly enjoyable package.Pub Date: April 2, 2024
ISBN: 9781250325372
Page Count: 304
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 28, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
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