Occasionally long-winded but readable and engaging—not to mention eye-opening, as the author delivers a firm warning to...
A wide-ranging account of earthquakes, the least understood of natural disasters, with vivid stories of the havoc they create and a warning about what will someday happen in the United States.
Journalist Miles (Superstorm: Nine Days Inside Hurricane Sandy, 2014), a writer-in-residence at Green Mountain College, took an extended road trip across the country to report on the myriad risks of seismic disasters. Along the way, she picked the brains of cooperative engineers and scientists and chatted with miners and emergency managers, people with whom she established immediate rapport. A daring investigator, she descended into deep mines, gained entry to nuclear power plants (some of which are built on fault lines), and ventured into the interiors of high dams, observing, asking questions, and conjuring some scary conclusions—e.g., earthquakes happen, our infrastructure is in a sorry state, and many localities have no seismic codes to regulate construction. Miles lightens this grim picture with her conversational writing style. She shares her thoughts, emotions, and experiences, even the most commonplace ones, effectively taking readers along on her cross-country wanderings. In the Midwest, where fracking is common and quakes are frequent, her conversations with people waiting for the big one while living regularly with toppled chimneys and broken china are spot-on. While she describes past earthquakes in other countries, the author focuses mostly on the prospects of a major quake in this country and what can be done to prepare for it. After looking at struggles to develop technology that can predict earthquakes, Miles reports on the success of early warning systems, which can make a major difference in survival rates, and she sets forth a scenario in which a few seconds of warning and some preparedness measures can ameliorate the devastation of a major quake.
Occasionally long-winded but readable and engaging—not to mention eye-opening, as the author delivers a firm warning to policymakers as well as individual citizens.Pub Date: Aug. 29, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-525-95518-4
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2017
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
An intriguing meditation on the nature of the universe and our attempts to understand it that should appeal to both...
Italian theoretical physicist Rovelli (General Relativity: The Most Beautiful of Theories, 2015, etc.) shares his thoughts on the broader scientific and philosophical implications of the great revolution that has taken place over the past century.
These seven lessons, which first appeared as articles in the Sunday supplement of the Italian newspaper Sole 24 Ore, are addressed to readers with little knowledge of physics. In less than 100 pages, the author, who teaches physics in both France and the United States, cogently covers the great accomplishments of the past and the open questions still baffling physicists today. In the first lesson, he focuses on Einstein's theory of general relativity. He describes Einstein's recognition that gravity "is not diffused through space [but] is that space itself" as "a stroke of pure genius." In the second lesson, Rovelli deals with the puzzling features of quantum physics that challenge our picture of reality. In the remaining sections, the author introduces the constant fluctuations of atoms, the granular nature of space, and more. "It is hardly surprising that there are more things in heaven and earth, dear reader, than have been dreamed of in our philosophy—or in our physics,” he writes. Rovelli also discusses the issues raised in loop quantum gravity, a theory that he co-developed. These issues lead to his extraordinary claim that the passage of time is not fundamental but rather derived from the granular nature of space. The author suggests that there have been two separate pathways throughout human history: mythology and the accumulation of knowledge through observation. He believes that scientists today share the same curiosity about nature exhibited by early man.
An intriguing meditation on the nature of the universe and our attempts to understand it that should appeal to both scientists and general readers.Pub Date: March 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-399-18441-3
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
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