A thought-provoking and visually stunning portrait of an embattled paradise.
The great river system of the Pacific Northwest is home to a clash between nature and industrial civilization—with the salmon its tragic victim—according to this vibrant photographic meditation.
Photographer and biologist Moskowitz and nature writer Pearkes survey, in words and images, the enormous Columbia River Basin, stretching from British Columbia to Nevada and from Montana to the Pacific Ocean, its many rivers now punctuated by dozens of dams. The book opens with an expansive essay by Pearkes on the Basin’s natural and human history, including the ancient geology and glaciology that forged its rugged landscape, the evolution of salmon and their epic upriver migrations from the sea to spawn in the freshwater streams where they hatched, the Indigenous cultures that shaped themselves around the salmon runs, and the modern project of damming and rationalizing the rivers for the purposes of flood control, navigation, irrigation, and electric power, which blocks salmon runs in the process. She concludes with an intricate consideration of the present-day struggle between native tribes and eco-activists trying to restore salmon runs and competing agricultural-industrial interests, and she highlights some hopeful recent compromises. Pearkes’ prose is lucid and full of compelling scientific and historical detail, but it also conveys a deep spiritual connectedness. (At a tribal salmon ceremony, she writes, a fish “darted unexpectedly in my direction and grazed my calf, then disappeared into deeper water. A bolt of pure energy charged through me. Over the next few days, I dissolved into a weeping mess.”) Much of the book is devoted to Moskowitz’s color photographs, which illustrate Pearkes’ themes with a visual counterpoint between nature and civilization, including sweeping vistas of winding river valleys, lush coastal rain forests, snowy peaks, and meadows dappled with wildflowers. But this arcadia, Moskowitz shows, is blighted by brutalist concrete dams, barges chugging up canals, forest slopes gouged by clear-cutting, and vast industrial farms; in one resonant juxtaposition, irrigation sprinklers spray a mono-crop while smoke from a distant wildfire dims the sun.
A thought-provoking and visually stunning portrait of an embattled paradise.Pub Date: June 1, 2024
ISBN: 9781680516609
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Braided River
Review Posted Online: April 25, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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