Timely and readable.
Veteran science writer Ellis (Tuna: A Love Story, 2008, etc.) celebrates the powerful white beast that has become the poster child for global warming.
Listed in 2008 as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, the polar bear has been transformed in recent years “from killer of seals and attacker of men to cute, furry, beloved icon,” thanks to Coca-Cola advertising and consumers’ preference for all things cuddly. In fact this awesome predator—now in decline and numbering 22,000 worldwide—long ruled the Arctic until men in ships spied their luxurious white pelts. Hunted by whalers and sportsmen, the bears became gifts for royalty and soon decorated floors in front of fireplaces. In this engrossing natural history, Ellis pays homage to the great bears and corrects misperceptions, noting that attacks by these beautiful giants are rare, and, given the sensitivity of their noses (they can smell a decaying whale carcass 20 miles away), they are easily thwarted with pepper spray. The author quotes at length from diaries, reports, articles and other material to describe these curious and individualistic mammals, which weigh up to 1,700 pounds and depend for their survival on the sea ice of several nations (Canada, United States, Denmark, Norway and Russia). Banned elsewhere, sport hunting is still permitted in parts of Canada, home to 15,000 of the world’s polar bears; tourists pay up to $40,000 for guided hunting. Among other aspects of bear lore and history, Ellis describes the Inuits’ fear and worship of the great bear; the lives of hunter-explorer Robert Peary and circus trainer Ursula Bottcher; and how polar bears fare in zoos, where, deprived of their customary surroundings, they sometimes act aberrantly and attack humans. The author includes a lengthy discussion of the “noticeable effect” of climate warming on the bears—from forcing them to swim further in search of ice floes, sometimes dying of exhaustion, to causing the collapse of the little dens that pregnant females dig in the snow, trapping the mother and cubs inside.
Timely and readable.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-307-27059-7
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2009
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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