Top-notch popular-science writing.
Meticulous but always engaging account of photosynthesis, the process that makes life possible.
Because most readers probably last encountered that word in high-school biology, science writer and Nature chief news editor Morton (Mapping Mars, 2002) faces a tough challenge in making the subject accessible, but he succeeds magnificently. The pace never flags in more than 400 pages recounting the history of life (essentially the history of photosynthesis) and of how plants convert sunlight, water and carbon dioxide into plant tissue, the source of animal flesh and food as well as oxygen and much of our landscape and weather. The author reminds us that the animal kingdom reverses photosynthesis. Animals consume oxygen, plants and each other to live, and then they die, decay and revert to inorganic matter, especially water and carbon dioxide. This cycle, stable for billions of years, is now out of whack, he notes. Humans are reversing photosynthesis on a massive scale by burning immense quantities of organic matter (coal, oil, wood), converting it back into carbon dioxide faster than plants can use it or the oceans and atmosphere can absorb it. That unsurprising bad news comes late in the book. Until then readers will enjoy the author’s biographies of scientists and accounts of research that revealed the specifics of how plants make life happen. Photosynthesis didn’t exist when life appeared well over two billion years ago, but it came soon after; Morton tells us how life probably originated and then delivers a detailed history of plant evolution to the present day. Because he describes these events as well as his scientist subjects’ thoughts, quarrels and experiments in precise detail, this is not a book to skim, but readers willing to take time will not regret it.
Top-notch popular-science writing.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-00-716364-9
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2008
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
The Johnstown Flood was one of the greatest natural disasters of all time (actually manmade, since it was precipitated by a wealthy country club dam which had long been the source of justified misgivings). This then is a routine rundown of the catastrophe of May 31st, 1889, the biggest news story since Lincoln's murder in which thousands died. The most interesting incidental: a baby floated unharmed in its cradle for eighty miles.... Perhaps of local interest-but it lacks the Lord-ly touch.
Pub Date: March 18, 1968
ISBN: 0671207148
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1968
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