Frank and funny, one hunter’s attempt to take down the biggest monster of all—middle age.
A seasoned hunter’s quest to bag the big buck.
In 2008, veteran sports journalist, biographer and senior Tennis magazine editor Bodo (The Trout Whisperers, 2006, etc.) set out on a two-month crusade to acquire what no prior hunting season had yielded: a “wallhanger.” Though having shot many fair-sized bucks in his decades of hunting whitetail deer, when the author hit 50, he resolved to up the ante. As bow season dawned in early October, Bodo’s pursuit took him from his upstate New York acreage to Pennsylvania, back to New York, on to northern Montana as Halloween neared, then down to the Texas hill country in early November, where a three-day escorted ranch hunt could cost up to $5,000. The author depicts the varied physical, ethical and psychological tests to which he subjected himself in hopes of tagging a record-worthy whitetail buck. A town sign he noticed in rural Montana—“WELCOME TO RUDYARD, 596 NICE PEOPLE AND ONE OLD SOREHEAD”—echoes the acerbic tone of much of Bodo’s rather hyperbolic commentary. Introspective but unapologetic, the author sheds light on the nature and allure of blood sports—“hunting isn’t about killing animals. So what is it? A few things, I thought…search for the connection with the old and honorable ways…a deeper understanding of the natural world…self-sufficiency and vestiges of the untamed”—while probing his own motives for engaging in this controversial hobby: “I bought the Weatherby .257 Mag Mark V for the same reason some middle-aged men buy a canary yellow Corvette convertible. Because it’s sexy, and looks great.” Though the uninitiated may eventually lose interest, deer hunters in particular will savor the level of detail Bodo includes in noting the equipment, tactics and techniques used in the field.
Frank and funny, one hunter’s attempt to take down the biggest monster of all—middle age.Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-618-96996-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.
A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.
For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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
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