An educational and savory meal, overdone but still flavorful.
A comprehensive report on the ubiquitous wooden sliver’s past, present and future, from the seasoned historian of life’s indispensables.
Though Petroski (Success Through Failure, 2006, etc.) admits to not being a regular toothpick user, his interest for this “simplest of manufactured things” is as limitless as the research material he pored over. In early 1911, grooves found on fossilized teeth suggested the existence of primitive teeth-cleaning utensils, perhaps made from such materials as grass, straw, animal claws, bird quills, rat skeletons, walrus whiskers and raccoon penis bones. The author examines his subject’s highly speculative genesis from an ornate item handmade in Portugal to the mass-produced, machine-made product introduced to America by philanthropic Massachusetts import-export businessman Charles Forster. Petroski also profiles industrious machinist Benjamin Sturtevant, who single-handedly developed the toothpick machine, dubbing it a “minor invention” as compared with the shoe-pegging and exhaust fanning devices he’d built during the same era. Forster saw promise in Sturtevant’s technological genius and brought his toothpick apparatus to Maine (where white birch wood is plentiful), creating a manufacturing, marketing and retailing craze in the late 1880s. Petroski touches on the toothpick’s varying degrees of social acceptance in a consistently interesting section. While it was “worn and used most conspicuously and proudly” during the Renaissance, a pick precariously positioned out of one’s mouth by the 20th century was considered vulgar—or democratically down-to-earth, depending on your point of view. The author taste tests a variety of foreign and domestic picks and graciously offers colorful personal opinions on his varied discoveries. Generous illustrations add texture to the sometimes dry, almost textbook-worthy narrative flow as Petroski examines the toothpick’s boundless uses, from freeing stubborn debris and serving hors d’oeuvres to testing baked goods for doneness or skewering unsympathetic cellmates.
An educational and savory meal, overdone but still flavorful.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-307-26636-1
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2007
The Ehrlichs, older and less doctrinaire than in their Population Explosion (1990) days, are guardedly hopeful that resources (the plow) can sustain population gains (the stork) in the century ahead. The emphasis is on guardedly, given a large number of ``ifs''relating to the vagaries of nature, weather, disease, and other uncontrollablesand the need to establish equity: society's willingness and ability to give a little (or a lot) to get a lot. That means that rich countries should give up their wasteful ways and see that the world's poor and rural populations can buy food or sustain themselves through wiser use of land and sea, and that all people control their fertility. But it's not simply a matter of ``passing out condoms and pouring on fertilizers.'' And it is the recognition of the multiple interacting variables and cultural contexts that makes this volume less a jeremiad and more a learning exercise. The Ehrlichs, with their protÇgÇe Daily, trot out numerous examples of where agricultural reforms and population controls have worked and where they have not; in both instances a major factor (as well as an example of needed equity) is the education of women. The authors are also good at demolishing slogans: Forget the idea that development shrinks fertility and the cynicism that says people can't change their behavior. Listen to local lore on pest control and crop diversity; encourage genetic research to find new strains to increase crop yields; alter the thinking that has led to monoculture cash crops for export while impoverishing those at home. To be sure, there is a lot of idealism: We should cut our kilowatts; disparage Vatican rule; go for bikes instead of cars. But the situation is not hopeless if enough people put their hearts and minds to it. The Stork and the Plow is a good place to start.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1995
ISBN: 0-399-14074-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Grosset & Dunlap
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1995
Here's a sobering look at the human race's impact on its environment, from the authors of Origins (1977) and Origins Reconsidered (1992). In addition to his work in unearthing the remains of early hominids, Leakey spent five years as director of Kenya's Wildlife Services, fighting the spread of elephant poaching. Many of his insights in this book arise from the recognition that our species now has the power to bring about the extinction of a majority of our fellow inhabitants of the planet. Of course, mass extinctions are not rare in the fossil record; there have been at least five occasions when nearly two-thirds of living species disappeared from the face of the earth. Most were killed off by natural disasters, whether on the scale of the meteor impact believed to have ended the age of dinosaurs or an isolated habitat being destroyed by a change in local climate. But beginning with the late Pleistocene, the impact of human beings becomes evident. The extinction of large mammalsincluding mammoths, mastodons, giant ground slothsin North America just over 10,000 years ago was almost certainly due to hunting by the newly arrived ancestors of today's Native Americans. Now the encroachment of human activities on the tropical rain forests (where a vast majority of living species reside) threatens to escalate the death toll to a level comparable to the five great prehistoric extinctions. The authors urge us to take action to prevent this catastrophe and present strong evidence that we are far richer leaving the forests undeveloped than we can ever be by letting them fall prey to monoculture and corporate use. Eloquently argued and rigorously supported by scientific evidence, this is a powerful document in the fight to preserve our natural heritage while there is still time. (20 b&w photos and line drawings, not seen) (Author tour)
Pub Date: Oct. 6, 1995
ISBN: 0-385-42497-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1995
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