The author offers little good news but provides an expert review of the human exploitation of marine life.
The James Beard Award winner and New York Times contributor dives into the world of “an oil that some believed would help us be much better than we are.”
The title refers to omega-3 fatty acids, essential nutrients in seafood but increasingly consumed as fish oil capsules, perhaps America’s leading nutritional supplement and a burgeoning multibillion-dollar industry. However, fish don’t make omega-3s; they're manufactured by phytoplankton, minuscule plants at the bottom of the oceanic food chain. Tiny crustaceans called krill eat phytoplankton, and they are eaten in turn by fish, seals, whales, penguins, and increasingly by humans. Popular writers often extol the benefits of omega-3s. Greenberg (American Catch: The Fight for Our Local Seafood, 2014) reviews the shaky evidence and delivers a penetrating analysis of its science, business, and future, and he also turns his attention to all aspects of the exploitation of sea life. Wild land animals make up a tiny fraction of our diet, but fleets of ships have been sweeping the seas for generations. Most readers will sit up at the news that this provides not only food and supplemental oil, but massive quantities of fertilizer and animal feed. Industry spokesmen maintain that scientific management will preserve the supply, but Greenberg interviews plenty of experts who disagree. “Unlike small plots of land that farmers for millennia have tended with care…no one has ever truly cared about the sea,” he writes. “It has been treated as a mine from which wealth is taken and never returned.” In the obligatory how-to-fix-it final chapter, the author describes dedicated individuals and their ingenious techniques for preserving these resources. All seem exciting, at least in theory. Greenberg also includes specifics of a healthy, life-extending diet; it requires omega-3s—but not in pill form.
The author offers little good news but provides an expert review of the human exploitation of marine life.Pub Date: July 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-59420-634-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: April 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2018
Whether you call this a personal story or nature writing, it’s poignant, thoughtful and moving—and likely to become a...
An inspired, beautiful and absorbing account of a woman battling grief—with a goshawk.
Following the sudden death of her father, Macdonald (History and Philosophy/Cambridge Univ.; Falcon, 2006, etc.) tried staving off deep depression with a unique form of personal therapy: the purchase and training of an English goshawk, which she named Mabel. Although a trained falconer, the author chose a raptor both unfamiliar and unpredictable, a creature of mad confidence that became a means of working against madness. “The hawk was everything I wanted to be: solitary, self-possessed, free from grief, and numb to the hurts of human life,” she writes. As a devotee of birds of prey since girlhood, Macdonald knew the legends and the literature, particularly the cautionary example of The Once and Future King author T.H. White, whose 1951 book The Goshawk details his own painful battle to master his title subject. Macdonald dramatically parallels her own story with White’s, achieving a remarkable imaginative sympathy with the writer, a lonely, tormented homosexual fighting his own sadomasochistic demons. Even as she was learning from White’s mistakes, she found herself very much in his shoes, watching her life fall apart as the painfully slow bonding process with Mabel took over. Just how much do animals and humans have in common? The more Macdonald got to know her, the more Mabel confounded her notions about what the species was supposed to represent. Is a hawk a symbol of might or independence, or is that just our attempt to remake the animal world in our own image? Writing with breathless urgency that only rarely skirts the melodramatic, Macdonald broadens her scope well beyond herself to focus on the antagonism between people and the environment.
Whether you call this a personal story or nature writing, it’s poignant, thoughtful and moving—and likely to become a classic in either genre.Pub Date: March 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0802123411
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
A quirky wonder of a book.
A Peabody Award–winning NPR science reporter chronicles the life of a turn-of-the-century scientist and how her quest led to significant revelations about the meaning of order, chaos, and her own existence.
Miller began doing research on David Starr Jordan (1851-1931) to understand how he had managed to carry on after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroyed his work. A taxonomist who is credited with discovering “a full fifth of fish known to man in his day,” Jordan had amassed an unparalleled collection of ichthyological specimens. Gathering up all the fish he could save, Jordan sewed the nameplates that had been on the destroyed jars directly onto the fish. His perseverance intrigued the author, who also discusses the struggles she underwent after her affair with a woman ended a heterosexual relationship. Born into an upstate New York farm family, Jordan attended Cornell and then became an itinerant scholar and field researcher until he landed at Indiana University, where his first ichthyological collection was destroyed by lightning. In between this catastrophe and others involving family members’ deaths, he reconstructed his collection. Later, he was appointed as the founding president of Stanford, where he evolved into a Machiavellian figure who trampled on colleagues and sang the praises of eugenics. Miller concludes that Jordan displayed the characteristics of someone who relied on “positive illusions” to rebound from disaster and that his stand on eugenics came from a belief in “a divine hierarchy from bacteria to humans that point[ed]…toward better.” Considering recent research that negates biological hierarchies, the author then suggests that Jordan’s beloved taxonomic category—fish—does not exist. Part biography, part science report, and part meditation on how the chaos that caused Miller’s existential misery could also bring self-acceptance and a loving wife, this unique book is an ingenious celebration of diversity and the mysterious order that underlies all existence.
A quirky wonder of a book.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6027-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
