At turns wacky, macho and whimsical. A literary version of Twister.
What Tony Horwitz did for Confederate re-enactors, poet Svenvold does for storm chasers.
Svenvold (Elmer McCurdy, 2002, etc.) got interested in tornados when, during a trip to Oklahoma (the state whose “unofficial breakfast [is] a cigarette stubbed out in a doughnut”) the New Yorker experienced one himself. The twister caught his attention, and in this entertaining and fast-paced work of narrative journalism, Svenvold takes readers into the curious subculture of storm chasing. His guide into the twister world is a geography grad student and storm chaser named Matt Biddle, who moved from Ohio to Oklahoma in 1987, just to get closer to big weather. People like him attend National Storm Chaser conventions, and some of them move from hobbyist to entrepreneur, founding companies that, say, take pictures of extreme weather to sell to, say, tire companies for use in ads. “It’s like sports,” Biddle explains—some people follow college basketball, others follow tornadoes. Svenvold does a little chasing himself. He and Biddle spend May of 2004 chasing storms, hurtling through Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota, and winding through the Texas Panhandle (Texas, it turns out, has more tornadoes than any state in the union). But the book, thankfully, isn’t just an adrenaline-fueled running after storms. Svenvold throws in a bit of history: America’s first storm chaser may have been Benjamin Franklin, who in August 1755 ran down a muddy lane in Maryland, following a tornado for over a mile. He offers a surprisingly serious and interesting discussion of why so few houses in Oklahoma have basements, and gives a leavening recognition of how much damage big weather can cause. His critiques of the Weather Channel—they’ve pussy-footed around with global warming, their female meteorologists look like porn stars, and they seem to pander to a voyeuristic interest in weather disasters—are fascinating. Svenvold even makes the topic of catastrophe insurance engaging.
At turns wacky, macho and whimsical. A literary version of Twister.Pub Date: May 10, 2005
ISBN: 0-8050-7646-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
APPRECIATIONS
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
