A lively, richly detailed account of exploration, conservation, and natural history.
If Peabody’s impassioned, vividly written chronicle of how Yellowstone became a national park does not make readers want to visit, nothing will.
After introducing the Yellowstone area as the homeland and hunting ground of Plains American Indians, Peabody’s narrative begins in the summer of 1871, when a team of men led by Ferdinand Hayden set out on the first scientific expedition across the uncharted territory of Yellowstone. The dramatic, picturesque descriptions of the expedition read very much like an adventure story. These scientists and artists explored, sampled, and photographed the extraordinary wonders they found. Their dispatches, describing boiling springs, burping mud pots, pools of molten magma, huge mountains of sulfur, and erupting geysers, confirmed earlier reports of the region’s distinctiveness. As proof was offered, would-be entrepreneurs schemed of ways to exploit these natural wonders. Peabody describes how, with the support of such conservationists and naturalists as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Frederick Law Olmstead, and John Muir, the surveyors were able to convince Congress to preserve the land from commercial development and set aside over 2 million acres as a national park. Peabody packs a lot of information into this narrative, somewhat to its detriment. She has a large cast to juggle, and frequent fact boxes on topics ranging from grizzly biology to profiles of specific features break up her account.
A lively, richly detailed account of exploration, conservation, and natural history. (photos, maps, endnotes, bibliography) (Nonfiction. 12-18)Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-63450-204-7
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Sky Pony Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2016
Though not the most balanced, an enlightening look back for the queer future.
An adaptation for teens of the adult title A Queer History of the United States (2011).
Divided into thematic sections, the text filters LGBTQIA+ history through key figures in each era from the 1500s to the present. Alongside watershed moments like the 1969 Stonewall uprising and the HIV/AIDS crisis of the 1980s and 1990s, the text brings to light less well-known people, places, and events: the 1625 free love colony of Merrymount, transgender Civil War hero Albert D.J. Cashier, and the 1951 founding of the Mattachine Society, to name a few. Throughout, the author and adapter take care to use accurate pronouns and avoid imposing contemporary terminology onto historical figures. In some cases, they quote primary sources to speculate about same-sex relationships while also reminding readers of past cultural differences in expressing strong affection between friends. Black-and-white illustrations or photos augment each chapter. Though it lacks the teen appeal and personable, conversational style of Sarah Prager’s Queer, There, and Everywhere (2017), this textbook-level survey contains a surprising amount of depth. However, the mention of transgender movements and activism—in particular, contemporary issues—runs on the slim side. Whereas chapters are devoted to over 30 ethnically diverse gay, lesbian, bisexual, or queer figures, some trans pioneers such as Christine Jorgensen and Holly Woodlawn are reduced to short sidebars.
Though not the most balanced, an enlightening look back for the queer future. (glossary, photo credits, bibliography, index) (Nonfiction. 14-18)Pub Date: June 11, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-8070-5612-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: March 12, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
Conversational, sometimes playful—not the sort of book that would survive vetting by school-system censors these days, but a...
A lovely, lively historical survey that takes in Neanderthals, Hohenzollerns and just about everything in between.
In 1935, Viennese publisher Walter Neurath approached Gombrich, who would go on to write the canonical, bestselling Story of Art, to translate a history textbook for young readers. Gombrich volunteered that he could do better than the authors, and Neurath accepted the challenge, provided that a completed manuscript was on his desk in six weeks. This book, available in English for the first time, is the happy result. Gombrich is an engaging narrator whose explanations are charming if sometimes vague. (Take the kid-friendly definition of truffles: “Truffles,” he says, “are a very rare and special sort of mushroom.” End of lesson.) Among the subjects covered are Julius Caesar (who, Gombrich exults, was able to dictate two letters simultaneously without getting confused), Charlemagne, the American Civil War, Karl Marx, the Paris Commune and Kaiser Wilhelm. As he does, he offers mostly gentle but pointed moralizing about the past, observing, for instance, that the Spanish conquest of Mexico required courage and cunning but was “so appalling, and so shaming to us Europeans that I would rather not say anything more about it,” and urging his young readers to consider that perhaps not all factory owners were as vile as Marx portrayed them to be, even though the good owners “against their conscience and their natural instincts, often found themselves treating their workers in the same way”—which is to say, badly.
Conversational, sometimes playful—not the sort of book that would survive vetting by school-system censors these days, but a fine conception and summarizing of the world’s checkered past for young and old.Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2005
ISBN: 0-300-10883-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2005
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