A grim reminder of the many “reasons why species should be preserved.”
A shocking account of how the passenger pigeon, a bird found only in North America, became extinct.
The year 2014 marks the centenary of the death of the last passenger pigeon known to be alive. In 1860, the bird’s population was estimated to be somewhere between 1 billion and 3 billion. Four decades later, they were on the verge of extinction. More than 150 environmental institutions are involved in Project Passenger Pigeon, an effort that Chicago Academy of Sciences research associate Greenberg (Of Prairie, Woods, and Water: Two Centuries of Chicago Nature Writing, 2008, etc.) helped spearhead. The group works to spur consideration of current environmental issues, and the author hopes that his chronicle of the tragic events leading to the pigeon’s extinction will “act as a cautionary tale so that it is not repeated.” When Europeans arrived in North America, the passenger pigeon was the most abundant bird species, and it was a significant food source for Native Americans. The number of pigeons increased as European diseases decimated the Indian population. The pigeons were also a source of high-quality protein for the early colonists. Up until the post–Civil War period, a modus vivendi seemed to have been established between bird and human, and Greenberg cites a report of “a pigeon flight along the Ohio River that eclipsed the sun for three days.” At the time, a record nesting of pigeons covered 850 miles. The author even hypothesizes that the white oak predominates in America because of the pigeon's preference for red-oak acorns. However, with the advent of railroads across the continent, it became profitable for commercial enterprises to sweep them up from prairie nesting sites and ship them by the tens of thousands to distant markets. Young squabs were particularly desirable, writes the author, but older live pigeons were also captured for trap-shooting contests, which were an occasion for significant gambling.
A grim reminder of the many “reasons why species should be preserved.”Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-62040-534-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
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
Unsentimental nature writing that sheds as much light on humans as on eels.
An account of the mysterious life of eels that also serves as a meditation on consciousness, faith, time, light and darkness, and life and death.
In addition to an intriguing natural history, Swedish journalist Svensson includes a highly personal account of his relationship with his father. The author alternates eel-focused chapters with those about his father, a man obsessed with fishing for this elusive creature. “I can’t recall us ever talking about anything other than eels and how to best catch them, down there by the stream,” he writes. “I can’t remember us speaking at all….Because we were in…a place whose nature was best enjoyed in silence.” Throughout, Svensson, whose beat is not biology but art and culture, fills his account with people: Aristotle, who thought eels emerged live from mud, “like a slithering, enigmatic miracle”; Freud, who as a teenage biologist spent months in Trieste, Italy, peering through a microscope searching vainly for eel testes; Johannes Schmidt, who for two decades tracked thousands of eels, looking for their breeding grounds. After recounting the details of the eel life cycle, the author turns to the eel in literature—e.g., in the Bible, Rachel Carson’s Under the Sea Wind, and Günter Grass’ The Tin Drum—and history. He notes that the Puritans would likely not have survived without eels, and he explores Sweden’s “eel coast” (what it once was and how it has changed), how eel fishing became embroiled in the Northern Irish conflict, and the importance of eel fishing to the Basque separatist movement. The apparent return to life of a dead eel leads Svensson to a consideration of faith and the inherent message of miracles. He warns that if we are to save this fascinating creature from extinction, we must continue to study it. His book is a highly readable place to begin learning.
Unsentimental nature writing that sheds as much light on humans as on eels.Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-296881-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
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