A stunning celebration of a country’s beauty.
A photographic homage to the natural and cultural treasures of the U.S.
This magnificent collection of images was culled from the “more than 20 million photographs from the extensive National Geographic archives and spans more than 100 years of the country’s history.” In the foreword, Harvard historian and New Yorker contributor Jill Lepore, whose 2018 book, These Truths, was an excellent one-volume history of the U.S., reflects on the life and travels of American writer and professor Katharine Lee Bates, the author of the lyrics to the titular song, which contains “echoes of Whitman.” Organized by region—the West and Pacific, East and Mid-Atlantic, South & Caribbean, and Midwest and Central Plains—the collection also includes tributes from prominent citizens from a wide variety of backgrounds, including Barack Obama (“what’s best in me, and what’s best in my message, is consistent with the tradition of Hawaii”), Cal Ripken Jr., Benicio Del Toro, Maya Rudolph, Jewel, John Mellencamp, James Earl Jones, and Tom Brokaw (South Dakota was where I was born and where I’ll be buried”). The consistently high-quality, striking photos are as diverse as the country’s citizenry: aurora borealis shining over a snow-covered Alaskan highway; scientists scaling a 3,200-year-old tree in Sequoia National Park; bison and elk roaming the frozen ranges of Wyoming; farmers harvesting wheat in Kansas; children enjoying a fountain in Chicago’s Millennium Park; massive waves crashing on the rocks next to Maine’s oldest lighthouse; Martin Luther King Jr. standing with other civil rights leaders during the 1963 March on Washington; blues legend B.B. King playing in a small club in Mississippi; and Mexican American students standing for the Pledge of Allegiance in Brownsville, Texas. This outstanding collection meets the high standards that readers have come to expect from National Geographic, providing a wonderful representation of the country’s rich and diverse culture, heritage, and landscape.
A stunning celebration of a country’s beauty.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4262-2142-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: National Geographic
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
The book is not entirely negative; final chapters indicate roads of reversal, before it is too late!
It should come as no surprise that the gifted author of The Sea Around Usand its successors can take another branch of science—that phase of biology indicated by the term ecology—and bring it so sharply into focus that any intelligent layman can understand what she is talking about.
Understand, yes, and shudder, for she has drawn a living portrait of what is happening to this balance nature has decreed in the science of life—and what man is doing (and has done) to destroy it and create a science of death. Death to our birds, to fish, to wild creatures of the woods—and, to a degree as yet undetermined, to man himself. World War II hastened the program by releasing lethal chemicals for destruction of insects that threatened man’s health and comfort, vegetation that needed quick disposal. The war against insects had been under way before, but the methods were relatively harmless to other than the insects under attack; the products non-chemical, sometimes even introduction of other insects, enemies of the ones under attack. But with chemicals—increasingly stronger, more potent, more varied, more dangerous—new chain reactions have set in. And ironically, the insects are winning the war, setting up immunities, and re-emerging, their natural enemies destroyed. The peril does not stop here. Waters, even to the underground water tables, are contaminated; soils are poisoned. The birds consume the poisons in their insect and earthworm diet; the cattle, in their fodder; the fish, in the waters and the food those waters provide. And humans? They drink the milk, eat the vegetables, the fish, the poultry. There is enough evidence to point to the far-reaching effects; but this is only the beginning,—in cancer, in liver disorders, in radiation perils…This is the horrifying story. It needed to be told—and by a scientist with a rare gift of communication and an overwhelming sense of responsibility. Already the articles taken from the book for publication in The New Yorkerare being widely discussed. Book-of-the-Month distribution in October will spread the message yet more widely.
The book is not entirely negative; final chapters indicate roads of reversal, before it is too late!Pub Date: Sept. 27, 1962
ISBN: 061825305X
Page Count: 378
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1962
APPRECIATIONS
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