by Richard Mabey ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 28, 2011
Transforms a much-maligned annoyance into a topic worthy of fascination.
British nature writer and popular BBC personality Mabey (Unofficial Countryside, 2010, etc.) cultivates an intriguing mix of natural history, botany and anecdotes from the frontlines of his own weed-infested garden.
A weed is often defined as “a plant in the wrong place,” writes the author at the beginning of this loving and lyrical tribute to those he refers to as “botanical thugs.” He goes on to discuss how weeds originate, since the source of and paths traveled by various seeds can often be traced, much like a family lineage. Through his examination of the historical hows and whys of seed travel, the author artfully explains how these jet-lagged seeds can create unique gardens anywhere from marshy river banks to desolate, cracked parking lots. His engaging writing style transforms what might otherwise be a stodgy, uninteresting field guide into a literary stroll through an English garden. Mabey may be pro-weed, but his gentle voice is oddly persuasive, reminding readers that weeds are nothing more than “a plant growing where you would prefer other plants to grow, or sometimes no plants at all,” and “the victims of guilt by association, and seen as sharing the dubious character of the company they keep.” Throughout the ages, weeds have been both praised for their healing measures and feared for their “seemingly diabolical powers.” Regardless how their worth is perceived, none can deny the inspiration they’ve provided throughout the annals of history as important figures in history and literature. Shakespeare, for example, mentions more than 100 species of wild plant in his works. Mabey’s deft and spirited treatise on nature’s supervillains will have readers remembering A.A. Milne’s defense of weeds in Winnie the Pooh: “Weeds are flowers too, once you get to know them.”
Transforms a much-maligned annoyance into a topic worthy of fascination.Pub Date: June 28, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-06-206545-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 6, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2011
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by Barry Lopez ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 20, 2019
Exemplary writing about the world and a welcome gift to readers.
Distinguished natural history writer and explorer Lopez (Outside, 2014, etc.) builds a winning memoir around books, voyages, and biological and anthropological observations.
“Traveling, despite the technological innovations that have brought cultural homogenization to much of the world, helps the curious and attentive itinerant understand how deep the notion goes that one place is never actually like another.” So writes the author, who has made a long career of visiting remote venues such as Antarctica, Greenland, and the lesser known of the Galápagos Islands. From these travels he has extracted truths about the world, such as the fact that places differ as widely as the people who live in them. Even when traveling with scientists from his own culture, Lopez finds differences of perception. On an Arctic island called Skraeling, for instance, he observes that if he and the biologists he is walking with were to encounter a grizzly feeding on a caribou, he would focus on the bear, the scientists on the whole gestalt of bear, caribou, environment; if a native of the place were along, the story would deepen beyond the immediate event, for those who possess Indigenous ways of knowledge, “unlike me…felt no immediate need to resolve it into meaning.” The author’s chapter on talismans—objects taken from his travels, such as “a fist-size piece of raven-black dolerite”—is among the best things he has written. But there are plentiful gems throughout the looping narrative, its episodes constructed from adventures over eight decades: trying to work out a bit of science as a teenager while huddled under the Ponte Vecchio after just having seen Botticelli’s Venus; admiring a swimmer as a septuagenarian while remembering the John Steinbeck whom he’d met as a schoolboy; gazing into the surf over many years’ worth of trips to Cape Foulweather, an Oregon headland named by Capt. James Cook, of whom he writes, achingly, “we no longer seem to be sailing in a time of fixed stars, of accurate chronometers, and of reliable routes.”
Exemplary writing about the world and a welcome gift to readers.Pub Date: March 20, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-394-58582-6
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Nov. 25, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2018
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by Barry Lopez
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by Barry Lopez ; illustrated by Barry Moser
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by Barry Lopez
by Hope Jahren ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 5, 2016
Jahren transcends both memoir and science writing in this literary fusion of both genres.
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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
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