A creative and scientifically wide-ranging account of Europe’s success as a conqueror.
A sweeping debut book attempts to explain the politics of invasion in terms of ecological factors.
The possibility that external factors—rather than philosophical or cultural principles—are the primary determinants in societal success was famously explored by Jared Diamond in Guns, Germs, and Steel (1997). Hecht explicitly fashions his book to be both a follow-up and rival to Diamond’s groundbreaking effort. For Hecht, however, the central causal factor is ecological, and he explores the imaginative and counterintuitive thesis that the nature of the landscape itself decisively shapes the ability of nations to become prolific invaders of other countries, extending their reach and power. The author considers the relationships between biodiversity, cultural diversity, and human behavior, concluding that the three are entwined in a complex causal nexus. There is also a multitude of factors that contributes to biogeographic diversity: altitude; heterogeneity of flora and fauna; the practice of agriculture, which tends to diminish biodiversity; the scale of the land available; and many others. An eclectic work, Hecht’s study is strikingly multidisciplinary, drawing from esoteric fields of study like invasion ecology. Some of his ultimate conclusions offer concise explanations that almost court skepticism: the Chinese turn out to be unspectacular invaders because of their dependence upon rice, which weds them to a specific, geographically bound climate. (Grain farming is less labor-intensive and less committal, unleashing the nomadic impulse behind the invasion of foreign territory.) Europeans, on the other hand, are overachieving invaders, given the consideration of 16 different factors. Hecht’s examination certainly doesn’t lack diligence, and he’s scoured an extraordinary pile of disparate secondary literature. He’s impressively keen to withhold the drawing of confident conclusions when the evidence doesn’t warrant it—at one point, he casts doubts on an entire chapter of his own. The writing can be uneven—he vacillates between haltingly dense academic jargon and an overly familiar breeziness. In addition, he has no choice but to acknowledge that however edifying his choice of causal determinants is, it is necessarily limited and reductive: “By circumstance, topography, intellectual thought, means and abilities, and perhaps some luck and quirks of history, nations of Europe became great invaders.” Still, this is a fun and enthralling exploration, and no less so because it inadvertently advertises its own philosophical failings.
A creative and scientifically wide-ranging account of Europe’s success as a conqueror.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 273
Publisher: iBooks
Review Posted Online: June 13, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
The book is not entirely negative; final chapters indicate roads of reversal, before it is too late!
It should come as no surprise that the gifted author of The Sea Around Usand its successors can take another branch of science—that phase of biology indicated by the term ecology—and bring it so sharply into focus that any intelligent layman can understand what she is talking about.
Understand, yes, and shudder, for she has drawn a living portrait of what is happening to this balance nature has decreed in the science of life—and what man is doing (and has done) to destroy it and create a science of death. Death to our birds, to fish, to wild creatures of the woods—and, to a degree as yet undetermined, to man himself. World War II hastened the program by releasing lethal chemicals for destruction of insects that threatened man’s health and comfort, vegetation that needed quick disposal. The war against insects had been under way before, but the methods were relatively harmless to other than the insects under attack; the products non-chemical, sometimes even introduction of other insects, enemies of the ones under attack. But with chemicals—increasingly stronger, more potent, more varied, more dangerous—new chain reactions have set in. And ironically, the insects are winning the war, setting up immunities, and re-emerging, their natural enemies destroyed. The peril does not stop here. Waters, even to the underground water tables, are contaminated; soils are poisoned. The birds consume the poisons in their insect and earthworm diet; the cattle, in their fodder; the fish, in the waters and the food those waters provide. And humans? They drink the milk, eat the vegetables, the fish, the poultry. There is enough evidence to point to the far-reaching effects; but this is only the beginning,—in cancer, in liver disorders, in radiation perils…This is the horrifying story. It needed to be told—and by a scientist with a rare gift of communication and an overwhelming sense of responsibility. Already the articles taken from the book for publication in The New Yorkerare being widely discussed. Book-of-the-Month distribution in October will spread the message yet more widely.
The book is not entirely negative; final chapters indicate roads of reversal, before it is too late!Pub Date: Sept. 27, 1962
ISBN: 061825305X
Page Count: 378
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1962
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