A well-documented book with more hard facts than usual but not more optimism.
An expert warning on climate change with an emphasis on water.
MacArthur fellow Gleick, a globally recognized expert on water, begins with statistics—e.g., 97% of the world’s water is salt water, and 80% of the fresh water is used to grow food—and then devotes nearly half of the text to a history of the world. The author’s first “age” of water runs from the Big Bang to the end of the Middle Ages, and the second is “our age,” when scientific and industrial revolutions led to the “replumbing of the entire planet with hard infrastructure that dammed, channelized, collected, treated and redistributed almost every major freshwater source on Earth.” Though we possess the ability to feed Earth’s 8 billion people, deliver safe drinking water, and take away wastewater, it’s not happening because these advances came with “the unintended consequences of pollution, ecological disruption, water poverty, social and political conflict, and global climate change.” The third age of water will lead to a dystopian future unless we fix matters, and Gleick devotes the remainder of the book to that prospect. The most gripping (and distressing) chapters recount our disastrous abuse of freshwater ecosystems, which cover less than 1% of the Earth’s surface and continue to shrink. Freshwater fish have the world’s highest rate of extinction among vertebrates. When fossil fuels are exhausted, alternatives exist, but this is not the case with fossil water (wells, aquifers for irrigation). Gleick delivers a realistic solution in which economists do cost-benefit analyses that include the loss of free-flowing rivers, dislocated communities, floods, the costs of human ill health from pollution, pandemics, loss of wilderness and nature, and the “use-value” of natural ecosystems. However, this requires governments to spend money, nations to work together, and communities to “do what needs to be done.” Ultimately, writes the author, “the chronic problem is a lack of will and commitment.”
A well-documented book with more hard facts than usual but not more optimism.Pub Date: June 13, 2023
ISBN: 9781541702271
Page Count: 368
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: March 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2023
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.
A charming bird journey with the bestselling author.
In his introduction to Tan’s “nature journal,” David Allen Sibley, the acclaimed ornithologist, nails the spirit of this book: a “collection of delightfully quirky, thoughtful, and personal observations of birds in sketches and words.” For years, Tan has looked out on her California backyard “paradise”—oaks, periwinkle vines, birch, Japanese maple, fuchsia shrubs—observing more than 60 species of birds, and she fashions her findings into delightful and approachable journal excerpts, accompanied by her gorgeous color sketches. As the entries—“a record of my life”—move along, the author becomes more adept at identifying and capturing them with words and pencils. Her first entry is September 16, 2017: Shortly after putting up hummingbird feeders, one of the tiny, delicate creatures landed on her hand and fed. “We have a relationship,” she writes. “I am in love.” By August 2018, her backyard “has become a menagerie of fledglings…all learning to fly.” Day by day, she has continued to learn more about the birds, their activities, and how she should relate to them; she also admits mistakes when they occur. In December 2018, she was excited to observe a Townsend’s Warbler—“Omigod! It’s looking at me. Displeased expression.” Battling pesky squirrels, Tan deployed Hot Pepper Suet to keep them away, and she deterred crows by hanging a fake one upside down. The author also declared war on outdoor cats when she learned they kill more than 1 billion birds per year. In May 2019, she notes that she spends $250 per month on beetle larvae. In June 2019, she confesses “spending more hours a day staring at birds than writing. How can I not?” Her last entry, on December 15, 2022, celebrates when an eating bird pauses, “looks and acknowledges I am there.”
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780593536131
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A charming, thoughtful pleasure for any animal lover.
A celebration of animal companions, mammalian, reptilian, avian, and otherwise.
The Ulysses S. Cat of NPR commentator Simon’s title was a “chunky orange Scottish Fold with endearing floppy ears and a broad, flat face that looked…as if he had been running full steam after a mouse when a door opened and…splat!” He may not have been the most photogenic of critters, but he was a steadfast companion to Simon’s mother and stepfather as the latter suffered illness and death. Other creatures populate Simon’s pages: a betta named Salman Fishdie, a grasshopper named Hoppy, many dogs and cats. Simon ranges widely to collect his stories; among the most affecting is a portrait of the people of Sarajevo under siege by Serbian forces, punctuated by an impatient colleague’s saying to Simon, “I do not want to get shot while doing a fucking pet story.” A good point, that, but Simon is emboldened and moved by the Sarajevans’ and U.N. soldiers’ care for pets displaced from their homes. “In making room for animals at the lowest times of their lives,” he writes, “Sarajevo showed the world real humanitarian aid.” In a somewhat lighter turn, Simon voices the hope that the afterlife will involve meeting again with all the animals and people we have loved, with no hard distinction drawn between birds, dogs, cats, turtles, and other beloved animal companions and other members of one’s family, biological and elective. While recognizing that animals make us better humans, holding unconditional love but eschewing grudges, Simon also decries the misuse of animals, particularly in laboratory settings where other modeling methods can be used that do not visit pain and death on such creatures as chimpanzees and white rats. Writes Simon, meaningfully, “Someday, I’m pretty sure we’ll look back on our use of animals in this way as something brutal.” Amen.
A charming, thoughtful pleasure for any animal lover.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9781324117186
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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