Stretch and Hobe (Lovebound: Recovering From an Alcoholic Family, 1990, etc.) tell the story of The Aark, a Pennsylvania rehabilitation center founded by Stretch for injured and abandoned animals and birds. The appealing if artless narrative begins in childhood, when Stretch's mother showed her how to care for the baby rabbits her father's hunting dog brought home. This compassionate child gave birth to an adult whose drive to care for animals saw her—as a single woman who was raising three daughters—caring for raccoons who slept in the girls' beds and shared their breakfast, for fawns who lived in the kitchen, and for a constant host of songbirds, hawks, geese, and bats who were being nursed. Stretch is a thoughtful naturalist whose tough-minded stands—``I don't kid myself about the animals I save. What I do for them allows them to go right back in the food chain''; ``There is a need for the responsible hunter in today's world...there is a need for culling''—will not endear her to the ecologically naive. Her stories about her ``patients''—the reason robins attack windows; cannibalism among hawks; raccoons' favorite pastime (masturbation); the way fawns predict the weather—are fresh with surprises about animal habits. Unsentimental and enjoyable, with a useful appendix on how to be a friend to wildlife. (Sixteen pages of b&w photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: June 27, 1991
ISBN: 0-525-24999-0
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1991
An attempt to bridge the gap between spiritual and scientific inquiries into the nature and origins of the universe, from a physics professor at Dartmouth. Actually, Gleiser believes that the studies of cosmologists such as himself are spiritual; it's just that scientists seek to prove their intuitions, rather than to rely on faith. He finds the notion that scientists are cold and objective, rather than passionate, to be ludicrous and even offensive, and his accounts of the work of Einstein, Copernicus, and Newton wonderfully personalize the essentially spiritual quests these men made on their paths to discoveries with reproducible results. Einstein spoke of a ``cosmic religious feeling,'' for instance. To go back a long way indeed, the Pythagoreans were a monastic order of sorts, their mathematical discoveries a way of proving order in the universe and, to their minds, a divine intelligence. Sometimes, Gleiser is hard pressed to find much spirituality at work—in the endeavors of Niels Bohr, for instance. Nonetheless, the spirituality that is evident in the groundbreaking work of many great scientists is convincingly illuminated by Gleiser in this rather unique overview. He begins with a survey of various creation myths, from Hopi to Zoroastrian to Christian, and shows their links to the early astronomy of the Babylonians and Greeks. He devotes a great deal of attention to the Greeks, then moves on to the ideas of the ``pious heretic,'' Galileo; the origins and intent of Newton's laws of motion; the discovery of the laws of thermodynamics; and the turbulent discoveries of the modern age, beginning with Einstein and progressing through quantum physics and on to the ramifications of the uncertainty principle. Even if one cares little for Gleiser's spiritual asides, this is an exceptionally clear summary of 2,500 years of science and a fascinating account of the ways in which it often does intersect with spiritual beliefs. (30 b&w drawings, not seen)
Pub Date: Nov. 17, 1997
ISBN: 0-525-94112-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
One of the founders of population genetics describes his life's work and its scientific context in this clear and accessible book, cowritten with his son Francesco. Luigi Cavalli-Sforza (Genetics/Stanford Univ. Medical School), a true polymath, combines the insights of anthropological fieldwork, historical linguistics, and molecular biology to create a history of human evolution, both biological and cultural. Having visited African pygmies in their villages and joined them on their hunting expeditions, he can present the essence of hunter-gatherer societies in a way no theoretician can match. But his field trips also provided him with blood samples for laboratory analysis, which reveals the complex relationships of the human species over its worldwide range. After a quick lesson in the basics of inheritance and genetics, Cavalli-Sforza gives the evidence for the African origin of modern human beings (including the often misinterpreted ``African Eve'' theory) and for the spread of humankind out of our ancestral home. The author was instrumental in reversing prevailing anthropological dogma during the postWW II era; the spread of agriculture, he showed, was a mass population movement, not simply the transmission of the new technology to new users. The story told here is often complex: Several mappings of the distribution of blood types across Europe reveal different patterns of migration. (A particularly fascinating correlation between the Rh- blood type and the Basque language implies that the Basques were among the earliest settlers of Europe.) At the same time, the author points out the genetic triviality of superficial racial distinctions on which bigots and demagogues place such importance. The translation occasionally misfires in rendering scientific terms, but is generally smooth and clear. An excellent book on human origins and modern genetics, as well as an entertaining self-portrait by a leading figure in the study of both. (56 b&w illustrations)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-201-40755-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Addison-Wesley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1994
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