A passionate collection of wildlife photos.
Animals in South Africa and the Western United States get the spotlight in this debut wildlife photography book.
Equipped with a high-quality camera and a bounty of enthusiasm, Williams shares the splendor of the wildlife he’s encountered in national parks, zoos, and preserves. From lions and warthogs in South Africa to raccoons and foxes in Montana, a selection of almost 40 types of fauna is featured in action and repose, alone and with company. Though some animals have a disproportionate number of photographs compared to others, Williams has a wonderful knack for capturing the arresting intensity of their direct gazes into the lens. Each photo is accompanied by a lengthy caption detailing useful facts about the animal’s size, behavior, and mating patterns along with relevant human encounters. Many captions also include vivid anecdotes about Williams’ own travels and experiences with the animals, replete with an almost overwhelming awe: “Tigers are arguably the most beautiful, magnificent animals in the world. They completely grab one’s attention and captivate us as nothing else can. They are incredibly beautiful and powerful, and live their lives on their own terms.” Some captions, on the other hand, involve an imagined personification, as with the “goofy, high energy flamingo” that the author saw acting as an “aerobic dance instructor.” Augmenting the scrapbooklike feel of the collection, Williams himself appears in two photos, stroking and holding baby animals. His most common reaction to many of the creatures: “Precious overload.” Though endangerment statuses are mentioned for some species, Williams’ focus is not so much on conservation as aesthetic and experiential appreciation, as when he describes his enjoyment of an ostrich steak in Africa. Readers are mostly encouraged to ogle the exotic safari parade as tourists. As the audience’s guide, Williams provides only brief glimpses into the looming threats these creatures face, instead fervently expressing his gratitude for his playful and intimate encounters with them. After photographing a cheetah, he “realized this was one of life’s top moments. This was one of the reasons I had to go to South Africa, to capture precious souls like this in their home.” But readers’ engagement is primarily limited to an almost voyeuristic consumption of remote, picture postcard–perfect beauty, inert in its encyclopedic banality.
A passionate collection of wildlife photos.Pub Date: March 8, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5043-9302-7
Page Count: 136
Publisher: BalboaPress
Review Posted Online: Aug. 8, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
BOOK REVIEW
The book is not entirely negative; final chapters indicate roads of reversal, before it is too late!
It should come as no surprise that the gifted author of The Sea Around Usand its successors can take another branch of science—that phase of biology indicated by the term ecology—and bring it so sharply into focus that any intelligent layman can understand what she is talking about.
Understand, yes, and shudder, for she has drawn a living portrait of what is happening to this balance nature has decreed in the science of life—and what man is doing (and has done) to destroy it and create a science of death. Death to our birds, to fish, to wild creatures of the woods—and, to a degree as yet undetermined, to man himself. World War II hastened the program by releasing lethal chemicals for destruction of insects that threatened man’s health and comfort, vegetation that needed quick disposal. The war against insects had been under way before, but the methods were relatively harmless to other than the insects under attack; the products non-chemical, sometimes even introduction of other insects, enemies of the ones under attack. But with chemicals—increasingly stronger, more potent, more varied, more dangerous—new chain reactions have set in. And ironically, the insects are winning the war, setting up immunities, and re-emerging, their natural enemies destroyed. The peril does not stop here. Waters, even to the underground water tables, are contaminated; soils are poisoned. The birds consume the poisons in their insect and earthworm diet; the cattle, in their fodder; the fish, in the waters and the food those waters provide. And humans? They drink the milk, eat the vegetables, the fish, the poultry. There is enough evidence to point to the far-reaching effects; but this is only the beginning,—in cancer, in liver disorders, in radiation perils…This is the horrifying story. It needed to be told—and by a scientist with a rare gift of communication and an overwhelming sense of responsibility. Already the articles taken from the book for publication in The New Yorkerare being widely discussed. Book-of-the-Month distribution in October will spread the message yet more widely.
The book is not entirely negative; final chapters indicate roads of reversal, before it is too late!Pub Date: Sept. 27, 1962
ISBN: 061825305X
Page Count: 378
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1962
APPRECIATIONS
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