by Gregory A. Freeman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 29, 2013
An incredible story of courage, endurance and luck.
An intense account of the last days and moments aboard the sailing ship Bounty.
Due to its use in the film Mutiny on the Bounty and in two of the Pirates of the Caribbean films, the tall, wooden-hull Bounty was one of the best-known ships in the tall-ship community. She drew large crowds to her decks while in port but only sailed with her crew due to her inability to pass Coast Guard regulations for "safety and seaworthiness." Using exhaustive research and first-person interviews, Freeman (The Last Mission of the Wham Bam Boys: Courage, Tragedy and Justice in World War II, 2011, etc.) places readers aboard the Bounty during her last voyage—straight into the center of Hurricane Sandy. Although the ship was old and full of wood rot, and despite the warnings he received regarding the superstorm, her captain, Robin Walbridge, chose to set sail from Connecticut for Florida, determined that he could outrun the storm and reach their destination safely. Freeman narrates a harrowing account of the next several days aboard the Bounty as the crew wrestled with the bilge pumps, which could not compete against the massive amounts of water entering the hold through cracks in the hull and from the deck due to the storm swells. When the abandon-ship call finally went out, the Coast Guard was quickly on hand, although the airplane and helicopter crews had their own nightmarish rides through turbulence to reach the survivors of the shipwreck. Written almost minute by minute in places, Freeman's rendering of this horrific storm and the courage of the men and women aboard the Bounty and in the Coast Guard will place readers on edge until the last plane lands safely back at base. On a quieter note, the author includes testimony and reports on the ongoing Coast Guard investigation into the last voyage of the Bounty.
An incredible story of courage, endurance and luck.Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-451-46576-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: NAL Caliber/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2013
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by Bonnie Tsui ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 14, 2020
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.
A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.
For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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by Bonnie Tsui ; illustrated by Sophie Diao
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by Bonnie Tsui
by Lulu Miller illustrated by Kate Samworth ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 14, 2020
A quirky wonder of a book.
A Peabody Award–winning NPR science reporter chronicles the life of a turn-of-the-century scientist and how her quest led to significant revelations about the meaning of order, chaos, and her own existence.
Miller began doing research on David Starr Jordan (1851-1931) to understand how he had managed to carry on after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroyed his work. A taxonomist who is credited with discovering “a full fifth of fish known to man in his day,” Jordan had amassed an unparalleled collection of ichthyological specimens. Gathering up all the fish he could save, Jordan sewed the nameplates that had been on the destroyed jars directly onto the fish. His perseverance intrigued the author, who also discusses the struggles she underwent after her affair with a woman ended a heterosexual relationship. Born into an upstate New York farm family, Jordan attended Cornell and then became an itinerant scholar and field researcher until he landed at Indiana University, where his first ichthyological collection was destroyed by lightning. In between this catastrophe and others involving family members’ deaths, he reconstructed his collection. Later, he was appointed as the founding president of Stanford, where he evolved into a Machiavellian figure who trampled on colleagues and sang the praises of eugenics. Miller concludes that Jordan displayed the characteristics of someone who relied on “positive illusions” to rebound from disaster and that his stand on eugenics came from a belief in “a divine hierarchy from bacteria to humans that point[ed]…toward better.” Considering recent research that negates biological hierarchies, the author then suggests that Jordan’s beloved taxonomic category—fish—does not exist. Part biography, part science report, and part meditation on how the chaos that caused Miller’s existential misery could also bring self-acceptance and a loving wife, this unique book is an ingenious celebration of diversity and the mysterious order that underlies all existence.
A quirky wonder of a book.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6027-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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