Lyrical and practical by turns, an apt portrait of a haunting landscape along with an ample variety of scientific views on...
A look at the Pole and, not incidentally, global warming, through the eyes of the author, the scientists and enthusiasts she interviews, and the journals of Victorian-era polar explorer Fridtjof Nansen.
As if to defy the legions of pioneering explorers determined to conquer it, the North Pole is, in fact, an icy sea. In 2002, author Brown journeyed to this non-place aboard the Russian nuclear vessel Yamal, a specially designed "ice breaker" capable of creating a route through the permanently frozen crust of the northernmost latitudes. In each chapter, Brown offers scenes from the voyage: seeing a polar bear, breaking the ice, watching the numbers on the GPS as they come ever closer to 90 degrees. Despite the exotic location, the voyage was essentially a tourist trip, a mostly safe adventure for polar dreamers. Then, switching gears, the author presents selections from Nansen's Farthest North, the journals of the explorer's expedition, originally published in 1897. Nansen is a gifted writer, and the log of his time on the Pole, the brutal conditions, and his relationship with his companion and his dogs, are transportive and gain even more punch when contrasted with Brown's descriptions of the luxuries of the Yamal's nuclear power (long, hot showers, for example). The third element here is comprised of interviews with the people Brown encountered on her trip and experts in the field of polar research. Many of these discussions focus on global warming, specifically its undeniability and complexity. There is also plenty of information about the indigenous people, wildlife, polar history, and daily life today in the northernmost human settlements. Equally fascinating and evocative are Brown's many photos of the land, ice and sea.
Lyrical and practical by turns, an apt portrait of a haunting landscape along with an ample variety of scientific views on the climate and ecology.Pub Date: June 1, 2004
ISBN: 1-891300-18-0
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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