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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Jahren transcends both memoir and science writing in this literary fusion of both genres.
Award-winning scientist Jahren (Geology and Geophysics/Univ. of Hawaii) delivers a personal memoir and a paean to the natural world.
The author’s father was a physics and earth science teacher who encouraged her play in the laboratory, and her mother was a student of English literature who nurtured her love of reading. Both of these early influences engrossingly combine in this adroit story of a dedication to science. Jahren’s journey from struggling student to struggling scientist has the narrative tension of a novel and characters she imbues with real depth. The heroes in this tale are the plants that the author studies, and throughout, she employs her facility with words to engage her readers. We learn much along the way—e.g., how the willow tree clones itself, the courage of a seed’s first root, the symbiotic relationship between trees and fungi, and the airborne signals used by trees in their ongoing war against insects. Trees are of key interest to Jahren, and at times she waxes poetic: “Each beginning is the end of a waiting. We are each given exactly one chance to be. Each of us is both impossible and inevitable. Every replete tree was first a seed that waited.” The author draws many parallels between her subjects and herself. This is her story, after all, and we are engaged beyond expectation as she relates her struggle in building and running laboratory after laboratory at the universities that have employed her. Present throughout is her lab partner, a disaffected genius named Bill, whom she recruited when she was a graduate student at Berkeley and with whom she’s worked ever since. The author’s tenacity, hope, and gratitude are all evident as she and Bill chase the sweetness of discovery in the face of the harsh economic realities of the research scientist.
Jahren transcends both memoir and science writing in this literary fusion of both genres.Pub Date: April 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-87493-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
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