Gloomy, stern and wholly memorable—certainly for environmentalists, wherever they may be, but, let’s hope, reaching...
A slender but punch-packing overview of the environmental destruction of the Far North.
Spookier than the Conrad Aiken short story from which it takes its title, environmental journalist Cone’s debut examines the causes for the Arctic’s emergence as the industrial northern hemisphere’s dumping ground. Though the air over Chicago carries far more polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, than that over the Arctic island of Svalbard, the bodies of animals and people throughout the Far North contain far higher levels of “toxic trash”—precisely because the food chain is much more attenuated there, so that animals at the top of the web consume the full weight of the pesticides and poisons their prey has eaten. In the Arctic, humans occupy that spot and “can carry millions, perhaps billions, of times more PCBs than the waters where they harvest their foods.” The poisons have every danger of demolishing the Inuit and other northern peoples, who can stop hunting and thus, by abandoning their traditional ways, lose their cultures, or who can continue following the old ways and thus continue consuming dangerous levels of toxins. Cultural or environmental genocide: Either way, it’s an unlucky draw, and the psychological distress this wholesale poisoning has brought on is massive. The polar bears have it no better; their blood now carries billions of times more PCBs than do the waters of the Arctic Ocean, yielding stillbirths, cancers and other maladies. But, Cone notes, though the Arctic is what one scientist calls the world’s “ ‘indicator region’—the canary in the mine—for the persistence and spread of toxic compounds,” it is not alone; the residents of the Arctic may be suffering, but then so are those in industrial nations—witness the one in six babies now born in the U.S. to mothers whose mercury levels exceed those judged by the government to be safe.
Gloomy, stern and wholly memorable—certainly for environmentalists, wherever they may be, but, let’s hope, reaching policymakers as well.Pub Date: May 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-8021-1797-X
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2005
Loads of good explaining, with reminders, time and again, of how much remains unknown, neatly putting the death of science...
Bryson (I'm a Stranger Here Myself, 1999, etc.), a man who knows how to track down an explanation and make it confess, asks the hard questions of science—e.g., how did things get to be the way they are?—and, when possible, provides answers.
As he once went about making English intelligible, Bryson now attempts the same with the great moments of science, both the ideas themselves and their genesis, to resounding success. Piqued by his own ignorance on these matters, he’s egged on even more so by the people who’ve figured out—or think they’ve figured out—such things as what is in the center of the Earth. So he goes exploring, in the library and in company with scientists at work today, to get a grip on a range of topics from subatomic particles to cosmology. The aim is to deliver reports on these subjects in terms anyone can understand, and for the most part, it works. The most difficult is the nonintuitive material—time as part of space, say, or proteins inventing themselves spontaneously, without direction—and the quantum leaps unusual minds have made: as J.B.S. Haldane once put it, “The universe is not only queerer than we suppose; it is queerer than we can suppose.” Mostly, though, Bryson renders clear the evolution of continental drift, atomic structure, singularity, the extinction of the dinosaur, and a mighty host of other subjects in self-contained chapters that can be taken at a bite, rather than read wholesale. He delivers the human-interest angle on the scientists, and he keeps the reader laughing and willing to forge ahead, even over their heads: the human body, for instance, harboring enough energy “to explode with the force of thirty very large hydrogen bombs, assuming you knew how to liberate it and really wished to make a point.”
Loads of good explaining, with reminders, time and again, of how much remains unknown, neatly putting the death of science into perspective.Pub Date: May 6, 2003
ISBN: 0-7679-0817-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Broadway
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
BOOK TO SCREEN
A media-savvy scientist cleans out his desk.
Tyson (Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, 2017, etc.) receives a great deal of mail, and this slim volume collects his responses and other scraps of writing.
The prolific science commentator and bestselling author, an astrophysicist at the American Museum of Natural History, delivers few surprises and much admirable commentary. Readers may suspect that most of these letters date from the author’s earlier years when, a newly minted celebrity, he still thrilled that many of his audience were pouring out their hearts. Consequently, unlike more hardened colleagues, he sought to address their concerns. As years passed, suspecting that many had no interest in tapping his expertise or entering into an intelligent give and take, he undoubtedly made greater use of the waste basket. Tyson eschews pure fan letters, but many of these selections are full of compliments as a prelude to asking advice, pointing out mistakes, proclaiming opposing beliefs, or denouncing him. Readers will also encounter some earnest op-ed pieces and his eyewitness account of 9/11. “I consider myself emotionally strong,” he writes. “What I bore witness to, however, was especially upsetting, with indelible images of horror that will not soon leave my mind.” To crackpots, he gently repeats facts that almost everyone except crackpots accept. Those who have seen ghosts, dead relatives, and Bigfoot learn that eyewitness accounts are often unreliable. Tyson points out that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, so confirmation that a light in the sky represents an alien spacecraft requires more than a photograph. Again and again he defends “science,” and his criteria—observation, repeatable experiments, honest discourse, peer review—are not controversial but will remain easy for zealots to dismiss. Among the instances of “hate mail” and “science deniers,” the author also discusses philosophy, parenting, and schooling.
A media-savvy scientist cleans out his desk.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-324-00331-1
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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