For the budding geologist—or photographer, or pilot—in the household, a thing of wonder, and an exemplary work of...
A captivating introduction, technical but not difficult, to the rumblings within the Earth that produce the world’s mountains.
Few readers will ever have the experience of flying over Denali/Mount McKinley, fewer still in a 1955 Cessna 180. Pilot, photographer, writer, geologist and medical doctor Collier, the owner of that craft, writes that it has “carried me from Fairbanks to Honduras, from Bangor to Baja.” As he traverses the skies, he has been photographing the geologic features he encounters. This app, excellent in both design and content, performs two main jobs: First, it provides a top-flight portfolio of photographs that look fine on earlier models but that leap off the screen with the retina display of the new iPad; this is no small thing, for Collier is esteemed as a landscape photographer, shooting in both film and digital formats. Second, it takes readers on a rigorous—but not off-putting—tour of geologic basics, beginning with the rock cycle (all rocks are, at some time or another, igneous, metamorphic and sedimentary) and ending with a close look at the various geologic provinces of North America. These range from the Appalachian Highlands of the East to the Basin and Range of the West—and then, of course, the mountains of Alaska, which are a world of their own. The app is accompanied by sound files of Collier commenting on his photographs, as well as animations showing geologic features such as subduction, continental drift and sheet erosion at play. Geology can be notoriously dull, but Collier writes in an easy and encouraging manner (“To begin to know a mountain, you have to look past its exterior shape and see the rocks inside”). Overall, the text is clear and easy to read, though it lacks a bookmarking feature; navigation is accomplished by means of a table of contents, as well as a band of thumbnails at screen bottom. Of added value are the hyperlinked pop-up definitions of geologic terms as they appear (“Sandstone: sedimentary rock composed of quartz, feldspar or other grains with diameters from 0.062 to 2 millimeters”).
For the budding geologist—or photographer, or pilot—in the household, a thing of wonder, and an exemplary work of feature-rich multimedia publishing.Pub Date: Dec. 2, 2011
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Mikaya Digital
Review Posted Online: June 11, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
PERSPECTIVES
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