Environmental chemistry that is eminently readable and hopeful.
This is a solutions-driven survey of the greatest threats to our increasingly toxic planet.
While covering just the tip of the proverbial iceberg, this overview of environmental chemistry touches on topics ranging from CO2 emissions and pesticides to nuclear fission. It at times delves into scientific details—such as the subatomic breakdown of the elements—and this information is presented in a way that is generally friendly to its intended young adult audience. Zimmer (Lighting up the Brain, 2018, etc.), a professor of chemistry, includes numerous anecdotes that make for compelling reading, for example, relating how Marie Curie’s notebooks are so radioactive that to this day they have to be stored in lead-lined boxes. Included in every chapter are up-to-date events such as the environmental and human injustice of the Flint water crisis. With the litany of hazards explored, it would be easy to feel hopeless, but Zimmer ends each chapter with the heading, “What Can You Do?” These sections provide advice for achievable lifestyle changes as simple as bringing your own reusable bags to the market. Also woven throughout are viable solutions that have already been implemented, such as the Sono arsenic filtration system being used in Bangladesh. Despite the dire subject matter, this slim, amply illustrated book is engaging and even uplifting. Terrific for classroom use.
Environmental chemistry that is eminently readable and hopeful. (source notes, glossary, further information, index) (Nonfiction. 12-15)Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5415-1979-4
Page Count: 124
Publisher: Twenty-First Century/Lerner
Review Posted Online: Nov. 6, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2018
The book’s high-interest topic is ill-served by its execution.
An exploration of animal intelligence.
Castaldo opens with a discussion of brainpower before summarizing historical thinking on animal cognition and then presenting evidence of it, in the form of a dizzying array of experiments on such subtopics as decision-making, empathy, a sense of fairness, and communication, among others. Candy-colored pastel shades and striking photographs make flipping the pages a pleasure, but actually reading them is something of a chore. Sidebars often appear out of sequence with the text and are of varying levels of utility, as is also the case with photo captions. Low points include a reference to the author’s middle school report on dolphins and a photograph of a dolphin alone in a tank that’s labeled, “A dolphin at the National Aquarium is studied by cognitive researchers.” Chapters are broken up into subtopics with catchy headings (“The Hive Brain”; “Emo Rats”) except when they are not, as with a relatively lengthy discussion of interspecies communication that wanders from bonobos to dolphins to Peter Gabriel to orangutans. The book’s sense of its audience is uncertain. Profligate use of exclamation points and simplistic “what would you do” scenarios seem geared to younger readers, while the un-glossed use of such terms as “habeas corpus” and “prosocial,” as well as a conceptually complex model of brain processing, assumes a fairly sophisticated audience.
The book’s high-interest topic is ill-served by its execution. (resources, glossary, source notes, bibliography, index) (Nonfiction. 12-14)Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-544-63335-3
Page Count: 160
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 25, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A serviceable account of a tough job for tough-minded people—rewarding but with a heavy load of responsibility.
An agent who stood (as his 2014 memoir puts it) Within Arm’s Length of three presidents offers a pared-down version of his training and career.
Emmett reduces mention of family and domestic life to passing mentions, covers a post-retirement stint in the CIA in a few sketchy pages, and leaves out entirely the ax-grinding complaints about officious superiors and “politically correct” policies and practices that set the tone in his original account. What’s left is a stiff but not entirely humorless recounting of how he achieved his ambition to become a Secret Service agent—sparked in grade school by JFK’s assassination—after a tour of duty in the Marines. He then made his way up from investigating check fraud and counterfeiting (the Secret Service’s original raison d’être) to join the Presidential Protective Division to work both “shift” assignments and on more heavily armed Counter Assault Teams during the Bush and Clinton administrations. “Sometimes people think Secret Service agents are cold-blooded, steely-eyed bodyguards with large biceps and dark glasses,” he writes. But “real Secret Service agents do not wear sunglasses indoors.” As to the rest, readers can judge for themselves from his experiences and expressed attitudes. He closes with career-prep advice and a timeline that includes presidential assassinations, both attempted and successful, through 2009.
A serviceable account of a tough job for tough-minded people—rewarding but with a heavy load of responsibility. (Memoir. 12-15)Pub Date: June 6, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-250-13030-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Review Posted Online: April 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
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