A worthy tribute and a good lesson on the conservation movement.
A tribute to David Brower (1912–2000), father of the modern environmental movement, on what would have been his 100th birthday.
Nature writer Kenneth Brower (A Song for Satawal, 2009, etc.) interviewed 20 environmental leaders about his father’s influence on their lives and conservation. The result is an engaging compilation that serves as a balanced testimony to Brower's leadership and an eloquent and candid insider reflection on the movement and how it has changed (more institutionalized, less about fundamental grassroots change). The book also works well as an analysis of effective advocacy and business/nonprofit leadership. After dropping out of Berkeley and establishing himself as an elite mountain climber, Brower became the first executive director of the Sierra Club in 1952. He proceeded to transform it from a "hiking fraternity" to an influential conservation advocacy organization. In 1969, the board of directors he built fired him in a controversy that would repeat itself at Friends of the Earth in 1986. These episodes of conflict are never fully deconstructed in the book, but rather referenced in discussions of David Brower's inimitable leadership style. He was a "visionary with the ability to articulate that vision" and a charismatic, bold, decisive speaker who inspired young people. He was uncompromising in his purpose and would act on urgent matters with little consideration for funding, but was personally shy and a bad manager. The interview content can feel rambling, and the litany of names is difficult to navigate for readers unfamiliar with his story. But the informal style captures the energy and immediacy of the contributors' passion for the cause and respect for one another. By addressing the work of others in the field, and not just their impressions of Brower, the author avoids sappy reverence and does justice to his father's cause by tracing the movement as a whole.
A worthy tribute and a good lesson on the conservation movement.Pub Date: May 17, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-59714-186-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Heyday
Review Posted Online: April 29, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2012
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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