A vividly written narrative of an amazingly diverse world still to be explored, whose destruction, as Rosolie wisely notes,...
In his first book, naturalist and explorer Rosolie chronicles his many thrilling experiences since 2006, when he first traveled to a research center located in a primordial jungle region of the Amazon basin, now threatened with unregulated development.
Now running Tamandua Expeditions to support conservation initiatives, the author was then an 18-year-old college student searching for volunteer opportunities to work with a conservation organization. During a college break, the author seized on an opportunity to spend a month at a jungle research center in southeast Peru, serving as an assistant in recording observations of the species inhabiting the area: spider monkeys, jaguars, crocodiles, a wide variety of snakes and more. This was the first of many trips to the center, which became his spiritual home. During his college years, he commuted back and forth from New Jersey to the Amazon; over time, he became an accomplished guide. Back home again, he worked to raise donations for the research center, which was a hand-to-mouth venture, and he also arranged ecotourism expeditions and volunteer groups to work at the center. Rosolie describes his deepening understanding of conservation and the issues involved in protecting natural ecosystems against would-be developers, loggers, mining interests and poachers. First and foremost, however, this is a gripping adventure story packed with plenty of adrenaline-filled encounters with massive snakes, intimidating jaguars and other creatures. On one occasion, the author was carried downriver while grasping the back of a gigantic anaconda “as thick as a small cow and easily well over twenty-five feet long…the mega-snake of legends.” As the author writes, “[a]dventure in its purest form is raw discovery. The draw to see what's around the next bend becomes hypnotizing; I was drawn forward by the powerful tide of the forest.”
A vividly written narrative of an amazingly diverse world still to be explored, whose destruction, as Rosolie wisely notes, would be a devastating loss for humanity.Pub Date: March 18, 2014
ISBN: 978-0062259516
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2014
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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