A thoughtful and imaginative tour of the Alaskan landscape, past and present, by a laureate of the tundra. In 1899, writes Lord (Fishcamp: My Life on an Alaskan Shore, 1997), —the Bill Gates of a century ago,— Edward H. Harriman, funded an exotic dream vacation for himself: he fitted a steamship —with motor launches and canoes, a piano and organ, weaponry for hunting, horses and tents, cases of champagne and the requisite thin-stemmed glasses, a library, the latest audio and visual equipment,— along with a 65-man crew and the livestock to feed them. Added to this roster were some of the nation’s leading naturalists, writers, and artists—C. Hart Merriam, the mammalogist and head of the US Biological Survey; Edward Curtis, the photographer of American Indian life; George Bird Grinnell, editor of Field and Stream and a founder of the Audubon Society; John Muir, the naturalist and wilderness philosopher; and John Burroughs, also a naturalist, who was one of the country’s most popular writers. Lord reconstructs their witty and learned journey as this latter-day Solon and his entourage traveled across the Far North, calling on native fishing villages and gold-rush camps, collecting samples of animal and bird life that would enrich the holdings of the Smithsonian Institution and other museums, and chronicling all that they saw. Lord has no small adventures herself as she retraces the Harriman Expedition’s steps, including a memorable encounter with a grizzly bear; she also notes all that has disappeared in the century since the Harriman party came to Alaska, including many species and many Native American cultures and languages. A beautifully written contribution to what might be called the literary history of science, on a par with Ivan Doig’s Winter Brothers and Barry Lopez’s Arctic Dreams.
Pub Date: May 1, 1999
ISBN: 1-58243-002-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Counterpoint
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1999
Unsentimental nature writing that sheds as much light on humans as on eels.
An account of the mysterious life of eels that also serves as a meditation on consciousness, faith, time, light and darkness, and life and death.
In addition to an intriguing natural history, Swedish journalist Svensson includes a highly personal account of his relationship with his father. The author alternates eel-focused chapters with those about his father, a man obsessed with fishing for this elusive creature. “I can’t recall us ever talking about anything other than eels and how to best catch them, down there by the stream,” he writes. “I can’t remember us speaking at all….Because we were in…a place whose nature was best enjoyed in silence.” Throughout, Svensson, whose beat is not biology but art and culture, fills his account with people: Aristotle, who thought eels emerged live from mud, “like a slithering, enigmatic miracle”; Freud, who as a teenage biologist spent months in Trieste, Italy, peering through a microscope searching vainly for eel testes; Johannes Schmidt, who for two decades tracked thousands of eels, looking for their breeding grounds. After recounting the details of the eel life cycle, the author turns to the eel in literature—e.g., in the Bible, Rachel Carson’s Under the Sea Wind, and Günter Grass’ The Tin Drum—and history. He notes that the Puritans would likely not have survived without eels, and he explores Sweden’s “eel coast” (what it once was and how it has changed), how eel fishing became embroiled in the Northern Irish conflict, and the importance of eel fishing to the Basque separatist movement. The apparent return to life of a dead eel leads Svensson to a consideration of faith and the inherent message of miracles. He warns that if we are to save this fascinating creature from extinction, we must continue to study it. His book is a highly readable place to begin learning.
Unsentimental nature writing that sheds as much light on humans as on eels.Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-296881-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
Drawings, words, and a few photos combine to convey the depth of a tragedy that would leave most people dumbstruck.
A new life and book arise from the ashes of a devastating California wildfire.
These days, it seems the fires will never end. They wreaked destruction over central California in the latter months of 2018, dominating headlines for weeks, barely a year after Fies (Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow?, 2009) lost nearly everything to the fires that raged through Northern California. The result is a vividly journalistic graphic narrative of resilience in the face of tragedy, an account of recent history that seems timely as ever. “A two-story house full of our lives was a two-foot heap of dead smoking ash,” writes the author about his first return to survey the damage. The matter-of-fact tone of the reportage makes some of the flights of creative imagination seem more extraordinary—particularly a nihilistic, two-page centerpiece of a psychological solar system in which “the fire is our black hole,” and “some veer too near and are drawn into despair, depression, divorce, even suicide,” while “others are gravitationally flung entirely out of our solar system to other cities or states, and never seen again.” Yet the stories that dominate the narrative are those of the survivors, who were part of the community and would be part of whatever community would be built to take its place across the charred landscape. Interspersed with the author’s own account are those from others, many retirees, some suffering from physical or mental afflictions. Each is rendered in a couple pages of text except one from a fellow cartoonist, who draws his own. The project began with an online comic when Fies did the only thing he could as his life was reduced to ash and rubble. More than 3 million readers saw it; this expanded version will hopefully extend its reach.
Drawings, words, and a few photos combine to convey the depth of a tragedy that would leave most people dumbstruck.Pub Date: March 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3585-1
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Abrams ComicArts
Review Posted Online: Nov. 25, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2018
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