A weapons-grade indictment of river despoliation, and an astute analysis of the socioeconomic factors that affect it....
Taking a break from the foreign-affairs beat, amateur fly fisherman Black (The Good Neighbor, 1988, etc.) broadly contemplates northwest Connecticut’s Housatonic River, its Shepaug and Naugatuck tributaries, and their respective fates.
The Shepaug River, the author declares, is his “Platonic ideal of a trout stream”: pristine, musical, cradled in a handsome landscape, and filled with trout (at least until Memorial Day, when downstream Waterbury taps into the river). A mere ten miles to the east runs the Naugatuck, a poisonous swill of auto tires, shopping carts, and chemicals with names too long for comfort. Why was this? Black asks. How did natural phenomena, human choices, economics, odd moments of timing, and simple twists of fate come to this pass? The author approaches the rivers from two complementary perspectives: ecologically, as a question of hydrology, geology, botany, zoology, and climate change; and politically, as an important and intricate analysis of “the social, economic, and political food chain of the watershed.” Here, he discovers, was the epicenter of American iron and armament production from the Revolution to the Civil War, and here he discovers the trout pool paradox: “the production of iron required exactly the same ingredients that make up ideal trout habitat: limestone, fast water, and the cooling forest canopy.” That the Shepaug didn’t go the route of the Naugatuck was really a matter of timing: the railroad to the furnace came too late, and the area’s sheer loveliness attracted a resident population with the economic and political wherewithal to protect the land from development. Black does a neat job of spelling out the class warfare embodied by the two rivers, providing a trim history of Waterbury’s sorry political landscape. He also gives away his secret: having fished there for years, “I had never once seen another angler on these wild trout waters.” He can forget that now.
A weapons-grade indictment of river despoliation, and an astute analysis of the socioeconomic factors that affect it. (Illustrations throughout)Pub Date: April 7, 2004
ISBN: 0-618-31080-0
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2004
As befits the elusive nature of Canis lupus, more questions are raised than answered in this absorbing and thorough discussion of a much studied but poorly understood and unfairly maligned predator Steinhart, who has been a columnist for Audubon magazine, consults with North American wildlife biologists, park rangers, ranchers, trappers, hunters, and even private wolf owners, eliciting a multiplicity of responses to a wide range of issues. Does the wolf on its own lower the number of prey animals such as deer and caribou, or are climate and human hunting more important limiting factors? Do wolves pose a threat to domesticated livestock? Should the wolf be artificially reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park and elsewhere? What are the genetic standards by which wolves should be judged for protection under the Endangered Species Act? In addition to presenting the proponents and the research behind these often heatedly debated issues, Steinhart unveils some of the observable facets of wolf life as well as speculating on wolf consciousness. Among the more fascinating topics are the reasons wolves howl; the requirements for attaining the rank of alpha male; the almost extrasensory perception exhibited by wolves in encounters with humans; and the evolution-based differences in intelligence and behavior between domesticated dogs and wolves. Steinhart is not sanguine about the future of the species. As wolf populations decline as a result of human habitation, ``the grave threat is that eventually there will be broad areas without wolves and the sharing of genes.'' The author thoughtfully adds appendices covering additional readings, places to see (or hear) wolves, and subspecies of the gray wolf. A well-balanced and highly informative report on the long and continuing scientific, economic, and politically charged debate.
Pub Date: May 2, 1995
ISBN: 0-679-41881-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
Taking his title from a Mark Twain satire, Steinberg teases from the parched earth of property law a nifty morality tale about the notion of ``owning'' nature. The urge to own a piece of the pie goes back to time immemorial, but advanced capitalism has brought it to ludicrous new heights. By turns farceur and parabolist, Steinberg (History/New Jersey Institute of Technology) serves up five of the more egregious examples of the need to own: Blackbird Bend, once in Nebraska and now in Iowa, where speculators sought to profit from a shifting river channel, pilfering Native American treaty lands in the process; the bayou country of Louisiana, where the speed of the flow determines who can profit from the oil nestled under the waterscape (hint: it's not the Creoles); Arizona's precious aquifers, where pricey deep wells suck the water table dry, with ruination not just for the driller, but for the neighbors as well; Fulton County, Pa., where cloud seeding threatened to tilt the playing field in favor of some farmers over others; and air rights (real estate losing its attachment to the earth), in which political clout (read money) allows you to steal sunlight from those living in the shadow of your skyscraper. Steinberg's fascination with the minutiae of the legal process can feel like fistfuls of sand being flung in your eyes, but for the most part, the language is brightened by a wit that relishes incongruities and lambastes greed, arrogance, and narcissism. ``Put simply,'' he writes, ``property law evolved in a way that helped turn more and more of the planet into less and less, benefiting fewer and fewer.'' In the culture of property, the spirit of law is the domination of nature and everything has a price tag. Steinberg gives bite to that old refrain—the rich get richer, the poor poorer, and the courts smooth the way. (Photos, not seen)
Pub Date: March 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-520-08763-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Univ. of California
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1995
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