Admirable work from an engaged, but not necessarily always engaging, author.
The internationally renowned field biologist's account of the 30 years he spent observing endangered animals on the Tibetan Plateau.
In a narrative that is part travelogue, part scientific logbook and part memoir, Schaller (A Naturalist and Other Beasts: Tales from a Life in the Field, 2007, etc.) takes readers on a journey through the northern Chang Tang plains of Tibet. For most of his long career, the eminent naturalist found himself drawn to the Chang Tang's "totemic loneliness...silence and desolation.” When he got the chance to travel there in 1984, it was to observe mammals like the Tibetan wild yak and snow leopard. Schaller eventually switched his focus to the chiru, or Tibetan antelope, and their migrations across Asia. At one time, the chiru were a plentiful species; by the late 1980s, however, Tibetan poachers had slaughtered them to near-extinction. In the beginning, Schaller's interests were purely scientific. But the more he became acquainted with Chang Tang, the more he developed a passion for what it represented: "a reminder of our moral obligation to discard self-indulgence and to protect life on Earth.” He made the plight of the chiru public through his work as a lecturer and quickly became the target of accusations that he was "a voice of the Chinese government.” Through his work and the work of other dedicated conservationists in Asia, the chiru has made a comeback. Schaller's single-minded dedication to wildlife preservation in Chang Tang and around the world is genuinely inspiring. However, his tendency toward meticulous factual recitations, his surface descriptions of people and places and his fragmentary reflections on himself and his life will likely not appeal to a wide audience.
Admirable work from an engaged, but not necessarily always engaging, author.Pub Date: Sept. 11, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-61091-172-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Island Press
Review Posted Online: April 9, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
A tiny book, not much bigger than a pamphlet, with huge potential impact.
A collection of articulate, forceful speeches made from September 2018 to September 2019 by the Swedish climate activist who was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.
Speaking in such venues as the European and British Parliaments, the French National Assembly, the Austrian World Summit, and the U.N. General Assembly, Thunberg has always been refreshingly—and necessarily—blunt in her demands for action from world leaders who refuse to address climate change. With clarity and unbridled passion, she presents her message that climate change is an emergency that must be addressed immediately, and she fills her speeches with punchy sound bites delivered in her characteristic pull-no-punches style: “I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. And then I want you to act.” In speech after speech, to persuade her listeners, she cites uncomfortable, even alarming statistics about global temperature rise and carbon dioxide emissions. Although this inevitably makes the text rather repetitive, the repetition itself has an impact, driving home her point so that no one can fail to understand its importance. Thunberg varies her style for different audiences. Sometimes it is the rousing “our house is on fire” approach; other times she speaks more quietly about herself and her hopes and her dreams. When addressing the U.S. Congress, she knowingly calls to mind the words and deeds of Martin Luther King Jr. and John F. Kennedy. The last speech in the book ends on a note that is both challenging and upbeat: “We are the change and change is coming.” The edition published in Britain earlier this year contained 11 speeches; this updated edition has 16, all worth reading.
A tiny book, not much bigger than a pamphlet, with huge potential impact.Pub Date: Nov. 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-14-313356-8
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
Not light reading but essential for policymakers—and highly recommended for the 40 million people who rely on the Great...
An alarming account of the “slow-motion catastrophe” facing the world’s largest freshwater system.
Based on 13 years of reporting for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, this exhaustively detailed examination of the Great Lakes reveals the extent to which this 94,000-square-mile natural resource has been exploited for two centuries. The main culprits have been “over-fishing, over-polluting, and over-prioritizing navigation,” writes Egan, winner of the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award. Combining scientific details, the stories of researchers investigating ecological crises, and interviews with people who live and work along the lakes, the author crafts an absorbing narrative of science and human folly. The St. Lawrence Seaway, a system of locks, canals, and channels leading to the Atlantic Ocean, which allows “noxious species” from foreign ports to enter the lakes through ballast water dumped by freighters, has been a central player. Biologically contaminated ballast water is “the worst kind of pollution,” writes Egan. “It breeds.” As a result, mussels and other invasive species have been devastating the ecosystem and traveling across the country to wreak harm in the West. At the same time, farm-fertilizer runoff has helped create “massive seasonal toxic algae blooms that are turning [Lake] Erie’s water into something that seems impossible for a sea of its size: poison.” The blooms contain “the seeds of a natural and public health disaster.” While lengthy and often highly technical, Egan’s sections on frustrating attempts to engineer the lakes by introducing predator fish species underscore the complexity of the challenge. The author also covers the threats posed by climate change and attempts by outsiders to divert lake waters for profit. He notes that the political will is lacking to reduce farm runoffs. The lakes could “heal on their own,” if protected from new invasions and if the fish and mussels already present “find a new ecological balance.”
Not light reading but essential for policymakers—and highly recommended for the 40 million people who rely on the Great Lakes for drinking water.Pub Date: March 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-393-24643-8
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Jan. 3, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
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