A notable look at a less-publicized chapter of environmentalism.
A Seoul National University professor recounts the transformation of South Korea from barren moonscape to tree-filled landscape and the pivotal role in that process played by former President Park Chung-Hee.
In 1960, South Korea’s mountainous countryside looked like a lunar plane. Plagued by years of unwise government policies and exacerbated by war and the presence of occupying powers, the country’s landscape had been virtually denuded of trees. Even the stumps had been dug up by occupying Japanese during World War II to get resin for use as an oil substitute. The result was lost animal habitat, frequent landslides caused by even small amounts of rain and the widespread breakdown of multiple ecosystems. However, in 1961, things started to change when Park Chung-Hee came to power. Listing the illegal deforestation as one of the country’s major problems, he began instituting policies aimed at reforesting South Korea. The turnaround was remarkable. In 1982, the United Nations cited South Korea as the only developing country to successfully accomplish reforestation after World War II. The author, a professor emeritus at Seoul National University, has written a straightforward and often fascinating account of South Korea’s reforestation success under Park, who was assassinated in 1979. A valentine of sorts to Park, the book credits him with single-handedly starting and pushing the drive to make South Korea more green. It contains numerous anecdotes about Park and his love of trees, such as his knowing exactly how many trees were planted at a village and noting upon his later visit that one was gone. The book could have been inundated with statistics, but to his credit, the author keeps the numbers to a minimum, preferring instead to focus on the people and policies that turned the country from brown to green, including the creation of the Forest Service. One noticeable flaw among the plaudits for Park: The book conspicuously circumvents discussing his controversial legacy, though it’s hard to deny his vital role in seeing the forest for the trees and harnessing the power of government for sound environmental policies.
A notable look at a less-publicized chapter of environmentalism.Pub Date: March 25, 2013
ISBN: 978-1482644104
Page Count: 264
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 5, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Drawings, words, and a few photos combine to convey the depth of a tragedy that would leave most people dumbstruck.
A new life and book arise from the ashes of a devastating California wildfire.
These days, it seems the fires will never end. They wreaked destruction over central California in the latter months of 2018, dominating headlines for weeks, barely a year after Fies (Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow?, 2009) lost nearly everything to the fires that raged through Northern California. The result is a vividly journalistic graphic narrative of resilience in the face of tragedy, an account of recent history that seems timely as ever. “A two-story house full of our lives was a two-foot heap of dead smoking ash,” writes the author about his first return to survey the damage. The matter-of-fact tone of the reportage makes some of the flights of creative imagination seem more extraordinary—particularly a nihilistic, two-page centerpiece of a psychological solar system in which “the fire is our black hole,” and “some veer too near and are drawn into despair, depression, divorce, even suicide,” while “others are gravitationally flung entirely out of our solar system to other cities or states, and never seen again.” Yet the stories that dominate the narrative are those of the survivors, who were part of the community and would be part of whatever community would be built to take its place across the charred landscape. Interspersed with the author’s own account are those from others, many retirees, some suffering from physical or mental afflictions. Each is rendered in a couple pages of text except one from a fellow cartoonist, who draws his own. The project began with an online comic when Fies did the only thing he could as his life was reduced to ash and rubble. More than 3 million readers saw it; this expanded version will hopefully extend its reach.
Drawings, words, and a few photos combine to convey the depth of a tragedy that would leave most people dumbstruck.Pub Date: March 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3585-1
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Abrams ComicArts
Review Posted Online: Nov. 25, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2018
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