A welcome addition to Darwin studies.
A geologist dives headfirst into an exploration of Charles Darwin and his work, demonstrating how he shares Darwin’s “passion for understanding the earth and Homo Sapiens’ place upon it.”
Everyone knows that Darwin’s observations during the voyage of the Beagle revolutionized our view of nature, but few know that the study of geology occupied much of those years. In this eye-opening account of a less well-known side of Darwin, Wesson, who worked at the U.S. Geological Survey for four decades and is now the scientist emeritus there, follows the oddball tradition that biographers retrace the footsteps of their subjects, no matter how tedious. The author chronicles his slogs through Brazilian forests, Argentine pampas, and Chilean and Scottish mountains, travels that, if nothing else, reveal the young Darwin’s inexhaustible energy. “Whatever rock, fossil, landscape, rodent, bird, or beetle that he found, he wanted to tell its story,” writes Wesson. Marine fossils had been turning up on mountaintops for a century. This didn’t bother traditional geologists, but younger scientists, led by Charles Lyell (1797-1875), claimed that gradual, observable processes could explain these phenomena. Early in the voyage, Darwin’s keen eye detected beaches hundreds of feet above shorelines. Examining coral reefs and atolls, he concluded that they could only form with uplift and subsidence of the islands they surrounded. Most dramatically, earthquakes shaped the landscape. Following a catastrophic Chilean quake, he measured, documented, and gathered eyewitness testimony as evidence that the land had risen. After the Beagle docked, Darwin’s lectures and publications thrilled advocates of this new view of geological processes. By 1840, when he turned his attention to natural history, he was a major British scientific figure. Wesson’s travels are mildly interesting, but he hits the jackpot when he concentrates on his subject and reveals that 20 years before Darwin wrote On the Origin of Species, his genius was already in evidence.
A welcome addition to Darwin studies.Pub Date: April 4, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-68177-316-2
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: Jan. 23, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2017
Doesn’t dig as deep as it could, but offers a captivating look at the NBA’s greatest era.
NBA legends Bird and Johnson, fierce rivals during their playing days, team up on a mutual career retrospective.
With megastars LeBron James and Kobe Bryant and international superstars like China’s Yao Ming pushing it to ever-greater heights of popularity today, it’s difficult to imagine the NBA in 1979, when financial problems, drug scandals and racial issues threatened to destroy the fledgling league. Fortunately, that year marked the coming of two young saviors—one a flashy, charismatic African-American and the other a cocky, blond, self-described “hick.” Arriving fresh off a showdown in the NCAA championship game in which Johnson’s Michigan State Spartans defeated Bird’s Indiana State Sycamores—still the highest-rated college basketball game ever—the duo changed the course of history not just for the league, but the sport itself. While the pair’s on-court accomplishments have been exhaustively chronicled, the narrative hook here is unprecedented insight and commentary from the stars themselves on their unique relationship, a compelling mixture of bitter rivalry and mutual admiration. This snapshot of their respective careers delves with varying degrees of depth into the lives of each man and their on- and off-court achievements, including the historic championship games between Johnson’s Lakers and Bird’s Celtics, their trailblazing endorsement deals and Johnson’s stunning announcement in 1991 that he had tested positive for HIV. Ironically, this nostalgic chronicle about the two men who, along with Michael Jordan, turned more fans onto NBA basketball than any other players, will likely appeal primarily to a narrow cross-section of readers: Bird/Magic fans and hardcore hoop-heads.
Doesn’t dig as deep as it could, but offers a captivating look at the NBA’s greatest era.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-547-22547-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
The acclaimed author of My Own Country (1996) turns his gaze inward to a pair of crises that hit even closer to home than the AIDS epidemic of which he wrote previously. Verghese took a teaching position at Texas Tech’s medical school, and it’s his arrival in the unfamiliar city of El Paso that triggers the events of his second book (parts of which appeared in the New Yorker). His marriage, already on the rocks in My Own Country, has collapsed utterly and the couple agree to a separation. In a new job in a new city, he finds himself more alone than he has ever been. But he becomes acquainted with a charming fourth-year student on his rotation, David, a former professional tennis player from Australia. Verghese, an ardent amateur himself, begins to play regularly with David and the two become close friends, indeed deeply dependent on each other. Gradually, the younger man begins to confide in his teacher and friend. David has a secret, known to most of the other students and staff at the teaching hospital but not to the recently arrived Verghese; he is a recovering drug addict whose presence at Tech is only possible if he maintains a rigorous schedule of AA meetings and urine tests. When David relapses and his life begins to spiral out of control, Verghese finds himself drawn into the young man’s troubles. As in his previous book, Verghese distinguishes himself by virtue not only of tremendous writing skill—he has a talented diagnostician’s observant eye and a gift for description—but also by his great humanity and humility. Verghese manages to recount the story of the failure of his marriage without recriminations and with a remarkable evenhandedness. Likewise, he tells David’s story honestly and movingly. Although it runs down a little in the last 50 pages or so, this is a compulsively readable and painful book, a work of compassion and intelligence.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-06-017405-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1998
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