by Esther Woolfson ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 7, 2014
Woolfson is an elegant, precise writer, and this transcendent memoir conveys exquisitely the vibrant world she inhabits.
Chilly Aberdeen, Scotland, may seem an unlikely place to investigate the natural world, but Woolfson (Corvus: A Life with Birds, 2009) offers a vivid portrait of birds, animals, insects and plants—and her place among them—in the city where she has lived for decades.
Located at 57 degrees north latitude, Aberdeen is cold, damp and stark, with changeable weather that “flits and blows, defies forecast and forecasters” to emerge as “several seasons in a day, only some of them recognizable….” Weather is a frequent topic of conversation, and adverse weather, many believe, is a punishment for hubris or, perhaps, too much joy. “Our climate is sombre,” Woolfson writes, “our mood, our stone, our mode of building against the weather.” In a gesture of hopefulness, she planted roses in her garden, but along with her clematis, it died during a cold spell. But other species flourished: rooks and jackdaws, gray squirrels and butterflies, oystercatchers and bluebells. Some were labeled pests: Woolfson called an exterminator to get rid of rats living under her house, and the city took measures to circumscribe starlings. The author cautions against intervening: “[W]ithin the limited framework of the artificial spaces of nature we have created, learning to stand back is all we can do.” Taking us through a year in Aberdeen, Woolfson closely observed changes in bird life and animal visitors, soil and sky: “different kinds of wind, different kinds of snow, different kinds of twilight.” Interwoven with diarylike entries are longer meditations on spiders, pigeons, jackdaws, sparrows and the complexities of the slug, who shoots a “love dart” as part of its mating behavior—a phenomenon, Woolfson speculates, that’s possibly the origin of Cupid’s arrow.
Woolfson is an elegant, precise writer, and this transcendent memoir conveys exquisitely the vibrant world she inhabits.Pub Date: March 7, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61902-240-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Counterpoint
Review Posted Online: Jan. 3, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2014
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by Paul Kalanithi ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 19, 2016
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
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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
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by Abhijit V. Banerjee & Esther Duflo ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 12, 2019
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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