At once funny and moving—a provocative call for greater involvement with the natural world channeled through a riveting...
Compelling portrait of the not-so-lazy days of summer in an overlooked area of the Jersey shore.
In this second installment of his series exploring the seasons in different geographical zones of the United States, acclaimed nature writer and renowned birder Dunne (Prairie Spring: A Journey into a Heart of a Season, 2009, etc.) teams with his photographer wife Linda to capture the many wonders of land and sea surrounding their home in the vastly uncharted Delaware Bayshore region of New Jersey. With characteristic sass and occasional pointed commentary, the author captivatingly describes the many adventures he undertook from Memorial through Labor Day while experiencing firsthand the varied riches offered by his own neighborhood: birding with his wife; fishing and crabbing with local fisherman; chasing poachers with Cumberland County game wardens; picking tomatoes with undocumented workers; baling salt hay with native farmers; star- and comet-gazing by himself in the wee hours of an August morning. “One of my reasons for writing this book,” he writes, “was to try to portray and preserve something of the unique and dwindling heritage of this little-known region.” His focus on historical preservation and environmental conservation dominates the narrative, but the compact book also sports interesting trivia about the nation’s fifth-smallest state and humorous historical factoids. These range from the Supreme Court’s 1893 decision rendering the tomato a vegetable for taxation purposes, even though it is a “taxonomically certain berry,” to a chapter supporting the reasoning behind Dunne’s decision, made in July 1978, never to wear shorts again (the greenhead fly had a lot to do with it).
At once funny and moving—a provocative call for greater involvement with the natural world channeled through a riveting portrait of the author’s cherished home region.Pub Date: July 7, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-547-19563-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2010
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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