A bleak, formidable chronicle of the increasingly deforested world of the Amazon.
A Brazilian reporter offers a “destructured” portrait of the Amazon’s collapse in terms of biosphere and Indigenous culture.
In her second book, following The Collector of Leftover Souls: Field Notes on Brazil’s Everyday Insurrections, Brum adopts an unconventional form to her work as a way of shedding the uncomfortable colonial connotations of her own Whiteness. The author, who lives in Altamira, in the Amazon jungle, writes with enormous empathy about the Indigenous people who, over the centuries, have learned to regard the rapacious Whites as “enemies” who have largely destroyed the Amazon rainforest. Brum describes her work with other researchers in Altamira, where she has studied historical ecology, “the field of study that explores how humans have interacted with the environment across space and time….Part of the Amazon is a cultural forest, meaning it has been sculpted over the course of thousands of years, mainly by humans, but also by nonhumans, the ones we call ‘animals,’ through their interactions with the environment.” As the author shows, most of the Indigenous people of the rainforest have been decimated by disease and violence. Brum is keenly aware of the disconnect between the White rhetoric about “ecology” and the Indigenous practice of being one with the forest, and she writes fervently about the massive deforestation that has been ongoing for decades. The author excoriates the right-wing administration of Jair Bolsonaro, elected in 2018, as having brought the country to a “climate emergency.” While connecting “with the forest and the women of the forest,” she writes, “deforestation, the destruction of nature, the contamination of rivers with mercury and pesticides—this became a lived experience of violence within my own body as well.” A relentless critic, she asserts that “exploitation by white people in the name of ‘progress’ is a political operation meant to erase everything that existed before.”
A bleak, formidable chronicle of the increasingly deforested world of the Amazon.Pub Date: March 7, 2023
ISBN: 9781644452196
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Graywolf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
A familiar format, but a timely reminder that cities are made up of individuals, each with their own stories.
Portraits in a post-pandemic world.
After the Covid-19 lockdowns left New York City’s streets empty, many claimed that the city was “gone forever.” It was those words that inspired Stanton, whose previous collections include Humans of New York (2013), Humans of New York: Stories (2015), and Humans (2020), to return to the well once more for a new love letter to the city’s humanity and diversity. Beautifully laid out in hardcover with crisp, bright images, each portrait of a New Yorker is accompanied by sparse but potent quotes from Stanton’s interviews with his subjects. Early in the book, the author sequences three portraits—a couple laughing, then looking serious, then the woman with tears in her eyes—as they recount the arc of their relationship, transforming each emotional beat of their story into an affecting visual narrative. In another, an unhoused man sits on the street, his husky eating out of his hand. The caption: “I’m a late bloomer.” Though the pandemic isn’t mentioned often, Stanton focuses much of the book on optimistic stories of the post-pandemic era. Among the most notable profiles is Myles Smutney, founder of the Free Store Project, whose story of reclaiming boarded‑up buildings during the lockdowns speaks to the city’s resilience. In reusing the same formula from his previous books, the author confirms his thesis: New York isn’t going anywhere. As he writes in his lyrical prologue, “Just as one might dive among coral reefs to marvel at nature, one can come to New York City to marvel at humanity.” The book’s optimism paints New York as a city where diverse lives converge in moments of beauty, joy, and collective hope.
A familiar format, but a timely reminder that cities are made up of individuals, each with their own stories.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781250277589
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
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