The wondrous and subtle cultural landscape of Yellowstone, and the powerful effect it has had on the human imagination, is lovingly detailed in this comprehensive, level-headed study from Schullery (The Bear Hunter's Century, 1988, etc.). This history of our first national park concentrates on the dynamic ideas and issues of the place rather than its bureaucracy and physical plant, reveling in the ``fabulously complex suite of geophysical and ecological processes'' called nature. Schullery is interested in the park as synecdoche: a park to be sure, but also a defining feature in the national life, a cultural, political, intellectual, and spiritual crossroad. He takes as his starting point the immediate postglacial recolonization of the area, detailing fauna and flora, speculating on the early human occupants, the far-reaching obsidian trade, the gradual development of the Crow, Shoshone, Bannock, and Blackfoot cultures, as shrewd, involved, and convoluted as any Old World counterpart. John Colter, Joe Meek, and Jim Bridger get their due, as well as the miners, travelers, and adventurers lured to the valley by reports of treasure and wonder. But Schullery concentrates on the postestablishment era, from 1872 on, and how the park has shaped, and been shaped by, contemporary modes of environmental thought. It has been a proving ground for all manner of conservation theory from prey/predator imbalances, wolf reintroduction, fire suppression, and ecological process management; on the other hand, there is the sorry tale of park concessionaries, the rivalries between the Park Service and the Forest Service, and the question of what a quality park experience represents for the throngs- -Winnebagoist to backcountry rambler—who pour through the storied gateways. Schullery's ``search'' is for a chance to embrace Yellowstone's wonder, and he gives it one warm, all-embracing bear hug. (33 b&w photos, 2 maps)
Pub Date: July 29, 1997
ISBN: 0-395-84174-7
Page Count: 322
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
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
Unsentimental nature writing that sheds as much light on humans as on eels.
An account of the mysterious life of eels that also serves as a meditation on consciousness, faith, time, light and darkness, and life and death.
In addition to an intriguing natural history, Swedish journalist Svensson includes a highly personal account of his relationship with his father. The author alternates eel-focused chapters with those about his father, a man obsessed with fishing for this elusive creature. “I can’t recall us ever talking about anything other than eels and how to best catch them, down there by the stream,” he writes. “I can’t remember us speaking at all….Because we were in…a place whose nature was best enjoyed in silence.” Throughout, Svensson, whose beat is not biology but art and culture, fills his account with people: Aristotle, who thought eels emerged live from mud, “like a slithering, enigmatic miracle”; Freud, who as a teenage biologist spent months in Trieste, Italy, peering through a microscope searching vainly for eel testes; Johannes Schmidt, who for two decades tracked thousands of eels, looking for their breeding grounds. After recounting the details of the eel life cycle, the author turns to the eel in literature—e.g., in the Bible, Rachel Carson’s Under the Sea Wind, and Günter Grass’ The Tin Drum—and history. He notes that the Puritans would likely not have survived without eels, and he explores Sweden’s “eel coast” (what it once was and how it has changed), how eel fishing became embroiled in the Northern Irish conflict, and the importance of eel fishing to the Basque separatist movement. The apparent return to life of a dead eel leads Svensson to a consideration of faith and the inherent message of miracles. He warns that if we are to save this fascinating creature from extinction, we must continue to study it. His book is a highly readable place to begin learning.
Unsentimental nature writing that sheds as much light on humans as on eels.Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-296881-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
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