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THE MOTH SNOWSTORM

Name: THE MOTH SNOWSTORM
Author: Michael McCarthy
ISBN: 978-1-68137-040-8

NATURE AND JOY

by Michael McCarthy ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 4, 2016

A heartfelt, lovely, and thoroughly lived-through meditation on the natural world and its central part in any civilized life.

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It is not enough that we rush to stanch the wounds our kind has inflicted on the world, writes British environmental journalist McCarthy (Say Goodbye to the Cuckoo: Migratory Birds and the Impending Ecological Catastrophe, 2010, etc.). More than that, “we should offer up its joy.”

Part of this book is a memoir of a life spent seeking nature in a time when nature is on the run, particularly on the too-populous, too–automobile overrun island of Britain. “It is only through specific personal experience,” writes the author, “that the case can be made, which is why I will offer mine.” Some of those experiences are luminous, as with a long-ago flurry of moths that yields his title and a sort of cri de guerre for his life as a champion of wild things. Part of his book, too, is a carefully elaborated meditation on what has happened to a world in which suburban gardens and rural woodlots are carpeted over with asphalt. What happens to people who live in such environs and to children whose worlds are constricted to the driveway and perhaps the driveway next door? McCarthy brings his experience as an activist and advocate to bear; writing of an effort to reintroduce the salmon to the Thames River, he admits the possibility that the world may be too far gone for our weak efforts at making up: “The principal lesson of the Thames salmon story, for me, is that we can sometimes damage the natural world too severely for it to be repaired.” That glumness is not the usual stuff of nature writing, which tends to be more celebratory, but McCarthy’s view is cleareyed, and this book extends a newly revived British literary naturalist tradition lately spearheaded by the likes of Robert Macfarlane, Roger Deakin, Adam Nicolson, and other wanderers along the hedgerows.

A heartfelt, lovely, and thoroughly lived-through meditation on the natural world and its central part in any civilized life.

Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-68137-040-8

Page Count: 272

Publisher: New York Review Books

Review Posted Online: Aug. 24, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2016

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | NATURE | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

- BOOK REVIEW
THE STORY OF NOAH AND THE ARK
adapted by Michael McCarthy & illustrated by Giuliano Ferri

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THE MISADVENTURES OF AWKWARD BLACK GIRL

by Issa Rae ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 10, 2015

An authentic and fresh extension of the author’s successful Web series.

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Writer, producer and director Rae, famous for her popular Web series, "The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl," channels her humor and attention to detail into this eponymous collection of personal essays about all the embarrassing moments that have made her who she is.

Sharp and able to laugh at herself, the author writes as if she's unabashedly telling friends a stream of cringeworthy stories about her life. Having grown up with the understanding that laughing at and talking about people was a form of entertainment and bonding, Rae continues the tradition by inviting readers into her inner circle and making her own foibles her primary focus. Almost 30, she opens up about nearly everything in her life, from her lifelong fear of being watched while eating in public to acutely awkward experiences with Internet dating and cybersex. The theme that race plays in this book is integral, although Rae's approach, as with all of her subjects, is decidedly humorous and lighthearted; she veers, always, toward a personal tone as opposed to one that's political or polemical. Her unwavering candidness, the sheer energy of her voice and the fact that she clearly finds herself to be terrific material make her a charismatic, if occasionally exasperating, narrator worth rooting for. Having been in a committed relationship for seven years, Rae unpacks how her Senegalese parents’ union contributed to her attitude (indifference) toward marriage. Some readers will find her proclamations and direct confessions offensive and be turned off; others may be offended but laugh out loud anyway. In Rae, her audience has landed on a singular voice with the verve and vivacity of uncorked champagne.

An authentic and fresh extension of the author’s successful Web series.

Pub Date: Feb. 10, 2015

ISBN: 978-1476749051

Page Count: 210

Publisher: 37 Ink/Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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JOHN ADAMS

by David McCullough ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2001

Despite the whopping length, there's not a wasted word in this superb, swiftly moving narrative, which brings new and...

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A great, troubled, and, it seems, overlooked president receives his due from the Pulitzer-winning historian/biographer McCullough (Truman, 1992, etc.).

John Adams, to gauge by the letters and diaries from which McCullough liberally quotes, did not exactly go out of his way to assume a leadership role in the tumultuous years of the American Revolution, though he was always “ambitious to excel.” Neither, however, did he shy from what he perceived to be a divinely inspired historical necessity; he took considerable personal risks in spreading the American colonists’ rebellion across his native Massachusetts. Adams gained an admirable reputation for fearlessness and for devotion not only to his cause but also to his beloved wife Abigail. After the Revolution, though he was quick to yield to the rebellion's military leader, George Washington, part of the reason that the New England states enjoyed influence in a government dominated by Virginians was the force of Adams's character. His lifelong nemesis, who tested that character in many ways, was also one of his greatest friends: Thomas Jefferson, who differed from Adams in almost every important respect. McCullough depicts Jefferson as lazy, a spendthrift, always in debt and always in trouble, whereas Adams never rested and never spent a penny without good reason, a holdover from the comparative poverty of his youth. Despite their sometimes vicious political battles (in a bafflingly complex environment that McCullough carefully deconstructs), the two shared a love of books, learning, and revolutionary idealism, and it is one of those wonderful symmetries of history that both died on the same day, the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. While McCullough never misses an episode in Adams's long and often troubled life, he includes enough biographical material on Jefferson that this can be considered two biographies for the price of one—which explains some of its portliness.

Despite the whopping length, there's not a wasted word in this superb, swiftly moving narrative, which brings new and overdue honor to a Founding Father.