A fervent warning about environmental dangers accompanied by a thorough list of resources.
A comprehensive collection of information about nanoparticles and their impact on the environment.
In this environmental science book, the fifth installment of the Phenomenology of Biocatastrophe series, Brack (Handbook for Ironmongers, 2013, etc.) presents a short narrative of the environmental damage done by tiny plastic nanoparticles, followed by a substantial annotated bibliography on the topic. The “Ménage à Trois” of the title refers to the complex, harmful relationship between nanoparticles, chemicals, and microorganisms, which the author blames for environmental problems. The main narrative takes up less than a quarter of the book; most of the pages are devoted to an extensive list of relevant sources, taken from peer-reviewed publications, environmental think tanks, activist organizations, and government publications from around the world. Instead of summaries, which traditionally accompany annotated bibliography listings, the author offers quotations from many of the works. Throughout the narrative, Brack applies a variety of names to the current era (including the “Age of Plastics,” the “Age of Income Inequality,” and the “Age of Information Technology”), and he does not shy away from eloquent indictments of the modern world, as when he references “the ever increasing growth of pyrotechnic petrochemical nuclear society…in the context of a vulnerable biosphere in crisis.” He also doesn’t hesitate to provide descriptions of chemical processes (“Autotrophic photosynthetic cyanobacterium may dance with our xenobiotic visitors, but marriage is unlikely”) or indulge in hyperbole, as when he compares climate change to the Holocaust and tea party groups to the Taliban. The book relies on specialized terminology—a list of acronyms used in the text runs to five pages—and assumes that readers have a high level of scientific literacy. As such, this book is not intended for a general audience and would be ineffective as an introduction to the problems of nanoparticle pollution. However, it does provide a wealth of information and a thorough, detailed compilation of current research for readers who have an existing knowledge base on the subject and seek impassioned analysis.
A fervent warning about environmental dangers accompanied by a thorough list of resources.Pub Date: Dec. 12, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9892678-4-7
Page Count: 440
Publisher: Pennywheel Press
Review Posted Online: June 23, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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BOOK REVIEW
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.
A light-speed tour of (mostly) Western poetry, from the 4,000-year-old Gilgamesh to the work of Australian poet Les Murray, who died in 2019.
In the latest entry in the publisher’s Little Histories series, Carey, an emeritus professor at Oxford whose books include What Good Are the Arts? and The Unexpected Professor: An Oxford Life in Books, offers a quick definition of poetry—“relates to language as music relates to noise. It is language made special”—before diving in to poetry’s vast history. In most chapters, the author deals with only a few writers, but as the narrative progresses, he finds himself forced to deal with far more than a handful. In his chapter on 20th-century political poets, for example, he talks about 14 writers in seven pages. Carey displays a determination to inform us about who the best poets were—and what their best poems were. The word “greatest” appears continually; Chaucer was “the greatest medieval English poet,” and Langston Hughes was “the greatest male poet” of the Harlem Renaissance. For readers who need a refresher—or suggestions for the nightstand—Carey provides the best-known names and the most celebrated poems, including Paradise Lost (about which the author has written extensively), “Kubla Khan,” “Ozymandias,” “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads, which “changed the course of English poetry.” Carey explains some poetic technique (Hopkins’ “sprung rhythm”) and pauses occasionally to provide autobiographical tidbits—e.g., John Masefield, who wrote the famous “Sea Fever,” “hated the sea.” We learn, as well, about the sexuality of some poets (Auden was bisexual), and, especially later on, Carey discusses the demons that drove some of them, Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath among them. Refreshingly, he includes many women in the volume—all the way back to Sappho—and has especially kind words for Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop, who share a chapter.
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-23222-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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