A breezy, almanac-like entry in the well-worn meteorology-and-history genre.
Lee starts out with an unpromising gods-for-clods and rocks-for-jocks survey approach to her subject, mistaking flippancy for humor and turning groaners along the lines of, “Siberia has cold like Bill Gates has money.” There’s not much science and precious little unexplored territory for many a desperate page; Lee strives to get a joke or pun in edgewise, evoking the spirit of Doug Adams, whom she identifies as a “humorist,” perhaps unaware of his hard-science chops. In time, fortunately, Lee warms up to her subject and begins taking things a little more seriously, even forgoing a chance to joke about the English gully called Dead Man’s Bottom in an enlightening discussion of fog, the Wars of the Roses and the many excuses people have for killing each other, friend as well as foe. Even so, Lee skims the surface, delivering numerous vignettes that seldom give more than a taste of an always fascinating subject. What would have happened if the Greeks had not known of the winds off Salamis? What if the weather hadn’t been rotten on Election Day 1948? Lee’s miniature essays hint rather than explicate, sometimes (as in the matter of the Bering land-bridge theory) drawing on out-of-date references; some of the pieces are only very incidentally about the weather, although they’re pleasant enough to read. The book shines at a few points, though: The author’s account of the Confederate prison camp usually referred to as Andersonville sheds Hippocratean light on that ugly business, while her recounting of the Winter War fought between Finland and the Soviet Union shows how for want of a glove a kingdom can be lost.
Mostly superficial bathroom reading for weather-trivia buffs.Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-083982-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2006
Categories: NATURE | SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
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Whether you call this a personal story or nature writing, it’s poignant, thoughtful and moving—and likely to become a...
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An inspired, beautiful and absorbing account of a woman battling grief—with a goshawk.
Following the sudden death of her father, Macdonald (History and Philosophy/Cambridge Univ.; Falcon, 2006, etc.) tried staving off deep depression with a unique form of personal therapy: the purchase and training of an English goshawk, which she named Mabel. Although a trained falconer, the author chose a raptor both unfamiliar and unpredictable, a creature of mad confidence that became a means of working against madness. “The hawk was everything I wanted to be: solitary, self-possessed, free from grief, and numb to the hurts of human life,” she writes. As a devotee of birds of prey since girlhood, Macdonald knew the legends and the literature, particularly the cautionary example of The Once and Future King author T.H. White, whose 1951 book The Goshawk details his own painful battle to master his title subject. Macdonald dramatically parallels her own story with White’s, achieving a remarkable imaginative sympathy with the writer, a lonely, tormented homosexual fighting his own sadomasochistic demons. Even as she was learning from White’s mistakes, she found herself very much in his shoes, watching her life fall apart as the painfully slow bonding process with Mabel took over. Just how much do animals and humans have in common? The more Macdonald got to know her, the more Mabel confounded her notions about what the species was supposed to represent. Is a hawk a symbol of might or independence, or is that just our attempt to remake the animal world in our own image? Writing with breathless urgency that only rarely skirts the melodramatic, Macdonald broadens her scope well beyond herself to focus on the antagonism between people and the environment.
Whether you call this a personal story or nature writing, it’s poignant, thoughtful and moving—and likely to become a classic in either genre.Pub Date: March 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0802123411
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2014
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | NATURE
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A neurobiologist reveals the interconnectedness of the natural world through stories of plant migration.
In this slim but well-packed book, Mancuso (Plant Science/Univ. of Florence; The Revolutionary Genius of Plants: A New Understanding of Plant Intelligence and Behavior, 2018, etc.) presents an illuminating and surprisingly lively study of plant life. He smoothly balances expansive historical exploration with recent scientific research through stories of how various plant species are capable of migrating to locations throughout the world by means of air, water, and even via animals. They often continue to thrive in spite of dire obstacles and environments. One example is the response of plants following the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Three decades later, the abandoned “Exclusion Zone” is now entirely covered by an enormous assortment of thriving plants. Mancuso also tracks the journeys of several species that might be regarded as invasive. “Why…do we insist on labeling as ‘invasive’ all those plants that, with great success, have managed to occupy new territories?” asks the author. “On a closer look, the invasive plants of today are the native flora of the future, just as the invasive species of the past are a fundamental part of our ecosystem today.” Throughout, Mancuso persuasively articulates why an understanding and appreciation of how nature is interconnected is vital to the future of our planet. “In nature everything is connected,” he writes. “This simple law that humans don’t seem to understand has a corollary: the extinction of a species, besides being a calamity in and of itself, has unforeseeable consequences for the system to which the species belongs.” The book is not without flaws. The loosely imagined watercolor renderings are vague and fail to effectively complement Mancuso’s richly descriptive prose or satisfy readers’ curiosity. Even without actual photos and maps, it would have been beneficial to readers to include more finely detailed plant and map renderings.
An authoritative, engaging study of plant life, accessible to younger readers as well as adults.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-63542-991-6
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Other Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
Categories: NATURE | SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
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