Frightening yet excellent popular science.
A potent examination of how melting glaciers and rising ocean levels are already at crisis levels.
Except for the conclusion, Bierman, a professor of environmental science at the University of Vermont, has written not another global warming polemic but rather a compelling introduction to Greenland, glaciers, and how scientists drill down through ice to reveal the past. Greenland is the world’s largest island; 80% is covered by glaciers, so it’s sparsely inhabited, which only came to world attention during World War II and the Cold War. Aware that it was closer to the Soviet Union than Canada is, the U.S. War Department took an interest. Beginning in 1951, it built several bases in the far north. Mostly used for intelligence gathering and weather reporting, they also supported major research to understand the cryosphere, “the frozen portion of Earth.” Happy to accept military dollars, scientists undertook the difficult, six-year engineering feat of drilling down through a glacier to bring up a mile-long core of ice and then dirt that revealed Greenland’s history and made breakthrough discoveries about snow and ice mechanics, glaciers, and climate change. Having accomplished their purpose, the bases were abandoned by 1966, leaving behind immense deposits of frozen sewage, diesel oil, drilling chemicals, and radioactivity. Bierman delivers an expert account of the 50 years of research that followed in laboratories around the world; examining the core, scientists learned that within the last million years, the ice beneath the camps had melted without human involvement, and tundra plants had grown across Greenland. Having hinted at bad news, Bierman provides it in the final chapter, warning that the rising temperature is melting Greenland’s ice, which holds enough water to raise sea levels by 24 feet. At the same time, the warming ocean and atmosphere are producing the deranged weather and violent storms already in progress.
Frightening yet excellent popular science.Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2024
ISBN: 9781324020677
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2024
A remarkably thorough and thoughtful case for the reconciliation between science and faith.
A duo of French mathematicians makes the scientific case for God in this nonfiction book.
Since its 2021 French-language publication in Paris, this work by Bolloré and Bonnassies has sold more than 400,000 copies. Now translated into English for the first time by West and Jones, the book offers a new introduction featuring endorsements from a range of scientists and religious leaders, including Nobel Prize-winning astronomers and Roman Catholic cardinals. This appeal to authority, both religious and scientific, distinguishes this volume from a genre of Christian apologetics that tends to reject, rather than embrace, scientific consensus. Central to the book’s argument is that contemporary scientific advancements have undone past emphases on materialist interpretations of the universe (and their parallel doubts of spirituality). According to the authors’ reasoned arguments, what now forms people’s present understanding of the universe—including quantum mechanics, relativity, and the Big Bang—puts “the question of the existence of a creator God back on the table,” given the underlying implications. Einstein’s theory of relativity, for instance, presupposes that if a cause exists behind the origin of the universe, then it must be atemporal, non-spatial, and immaterial. While the book’s contentions related to Christianity specifically, such as its belief in the “indisputable truths contained in the Bible,” may not be as convincing as its broader argument on how the idea of a creator God fits into contemporary scientific understanding, the volume nevertheless offers a refreshingly nuanced approach to the topic. From the work’s outset, the authors (academically trained in math and engineering) reject fundamentalist interpretations of creationism (such as claims that Earth is only 6,000 years old) as “fanciful beliefs” while challenging the philosophical underpinnings of a purely materialist understanding of the universe that may not fit into recent scientific paradigm shifts. Featuring over 500 pages and more than 600 research notes, this book strikes a balance between its academic foundations and an accessible writing style, complemented by dozens of photographs from various sources, diagrams, and charts.
A remarkably thorough and thoughtful case for the reconciliation between science and faith.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9789998782402
Page Count: 562
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.
A charming bird journey with the bestselling author.
In his introduction to Tan’s “nature journal,” David Allen Sibley, the acclaimed ornithologist, nails the spirit of this book: a “collection of delightfully quirky, thoughtful, and personal observations of birds in sketches and words.” For years, Tan has looked out on her California backyard “paradise”—oaks, periwinkle vines, birch, Japanese maple, fuchsia shrubs—observing more than 60 species of birds, and she fashions her findings into delightful and approachable journal excerpts, accompanied by her gorgeous color sketches. As the entries—“a record of my life”—move along, the author becomes more adept at identifying and capturing them with words and pencils. Her first entry is September 16, 2017: Shortly after putting up hummingbird feeders, one of the tiny, delicate creatures landed on her hand and fed. “We have a relationship,” she writes. “I am in love.” By August 2018, her backyard “has become a menagerie of fledglings…all learning to fly.” Day by day, she has continued to learn more about the birds, their activities, and how she should relate to them; she also admits mistakes when they occur. In December 2018, she was excited to observe a Townsend’s Warbler—“Omigod! It’s looking at me. Displeased expression.” Battling pesky squirrels, Tan deployed Hot Pepper Suet to keep them away, and she deterred crows by hanging a fake one upside down. The author also declared war on outdoor cats when she learned they kill more than 1 billion birds per year. In May 2019, she notes that she spends $250 per month on beetle larvae. In June 2019, she confesses “spending more hours a day staring at birds than writing. How can I not?” Her last entry, on December 15, 2022, celebrates when an eating bird pauses, “looks and acknowledges I am there.”
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780593536131
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
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