Fitfully laced with interior monologues, a chronicle of a distraction-laden trip that never lives up to its pretensions.
Journal of a kayak expedition on the largely unmapped, unexplored Lugenda River in Mozambique: something of a comedown from Stark’s adventure reporting in Last Breath (2001).
For starters, his 15-day trip—down the Lugenda from Belem to its confluence with the Ruvuma some 200 miles to the northeast—is less than the epic journey suggested by the book’s inflated subtitle. The faint aroma of compromise, which Stark himself is quick to identify, is present from the start. He has been invited to join the kayaking venture by Cherri Briggs, an American tour operator based in Botswana who implies that someone who can write like Stark could boost her business. Group dynamics are roiled by two unpaid South African guides, Rod and Clinton (the latter raised in Zimbabwe), who accompany Briggs, her brother Steve and the author. Stark is immediately appalled by the pair’s racist humor and open attitude of white superiority when dealing with the locals. What’s worse, inexperienced kayaker Briggs at the outset seems to see herself as the river boss as well as the sponsor. That misconception gets straightened out over a series of portages, dashes through rapids and random misadventures. Constant allusions to the threat of crocodiles and hippos with teeth like “railroad spikes” remain mostly allusions, although both are observed in number. In the absence of mortal danger, Stark’s recurring diarrhea becomes a subtext; after one harrowing day, he has the epiphany that a native African hunter of his age (48) would be relegated to tending the fire while younger stalwarts (a somewhat rueful nod to Clinton and Rod) do the manly stuff. His interjected tales of original African explorers like Ledyard, Mungo Park and even Vasco da Gama, presumably intended to add dimension to the two-week experience, are only marginally effective.
Fitfully laced with interior monologues, a chronicle of a distraction-laden trip that never lives up to its pretensions.Pub Date: June 8, 2005
ISBN: 0-345-44181-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2005
The book is not entirely negative; final chapters indicate roads of reversal, before it is too late!
It should come as no surprise that the gifted author of The Sea Around Usand its successors can take another branch of science—that phase of biology indicated by the term ecology—and bring it so sharply into focus that any intelligent layman can understand what she is talking about.
Understand, yes, and shudder, for she has drawn a living portrait of what is happening to this balance nature has decreed in the science of life—and what man is doing (and has done) to destroy it and create a science of death. Death to our birds, to fish, to wild creatures of the woods—and, to a degree as yet undetermined, to man himself. World War II hastened the program by releasing lethal chemicals for destruction of insects that threatened man’s health and comfort, vegetation that needed quick disposal. The war against insects had been under way before, but the methods were relatively harmless to other than the insects under attack; the products non-chemical, sometimes even introduction of other insects, enemies of the ones under attack. But with chemicals—increasingly stronger, more potent, more varied, more dangerous—new chain reactions have set in. And ironically, the insects are winning the war, setting up immunities, and re-emerging, their natural enemies destroyed. The peril does not stop here. Waters, even to the underground water tables, are contaminated; soils are poisoned. The birds consume the poisons in their insect and earthworm diet; the cattle, in their fodder; the fish, in the waters and the food those waters provide. And humans? They drink the milk, eat the vegetables, the fish, the poultry. There is enough evidence to point to the far-reaching effects; but this is only the beginning,—in cancer, in liver disorders, in radiation perils…This is the horrifying story. It needed to be told—and by a scientist with a rare gift of communication and an overwhelming sense of responsibility. Already the articles taken from the book for publication in The New Yorkerare being widely discussed. Book-of-the-Month distribution in October will spread the message yet more widely.
The book is not entirely negative; final chapters indicate roads of reversal, before it is too late!Pub Date: Sept. 27, 1962
ISBN: 061825305X
Page Count: 378
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1962
APPRECIATIONS
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
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