Lucent, lyrical prose evokes Macfarlane’s aesthetic, ethical, and powerfully tactile response to nature’s enchantments.
A prizewinning naturalist explores the connection between what we say and how we see.
“A basic literacy of landscape is falling away,” writes Macfarlane (The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot, 2012, etc.) with regret. “A common language—a language of the commons—is getting rarer.” He was dismayed when a new edition of the Oxford Junior Dictionary eliminated words such as acorn, catkin, heather, and nectar in favor of blog, broadband, and voicemail to reflect, the publisher explained, “the consensus experience of modern-day childhood.” In this fascinating, poetic compilation of vocabulary invented to describe the natural world, the author aims to “re-wild our contemporary language for landscape” and enrich our “vibrancy of perception.” “Language is fundamental to the possibility of re-wonderment,” he writes, “for language does not just register experience, it produces it.” Throughout, Macfarlane chronicles his peregrinations across different landscapes, including flatlands, highlands, water, coast, and woods, sometimes in the company of friends, often with references to nature and travel writers he admires (Roger Deakin, John Stilgoe, and Barry Lopez, to name a few) and to earlier word researchers. Each chapter is followed by a glossary of terms for aspects of “land, sea, weather and atmosphere” gleaned from English, Gaelic, Cornish, Welsh, Breton, and other dialects of the British Isles. Readers will discover, for example, that a “bunny bole” names the entrance to a mine in Cornwall; a “lunky” is a “gap in a fence or dyke (big enough to let sheep through but not cattle)” in Galloway; “oiteag” is Gaelic for a “wisp of wind”; and in Shetland, “skub” describes “hazy clouds driven by the wind.” Macfarlane has found 50 words for various permutations of snow, including “ungive” to describe thawing, in Northamptonshire. Many terms, the author contends, function as “tiny poems that conjure scenes.”
Lucent, lyrical prose evokes Macfarlane’s aesthetic, ethical, and powerfully tactile response to nature’s enchantments.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-241-96787-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
An intriguing meditation on the nature of the universe and our attempts to understand it that should appeal to both...
Italian theoretical physicist Rovelli (General Relativity: The Most Beautiful of Theories, 2015, etc.) shares his thoughts on the broader scientific and philosophical implications of the great revolution that has taken place over the past century.
These seven lessons, which first appeared as articles in the Sunday supplement of the Italian newspaper Sole 24 Ore, are addressed to readers with little knowledge of physics. In less than 100 pages, the author, who teaches physics in both France and the United States, cogently covers the great accomplishments of the past and the open questions still baffling physicists today. In the first lesson, he focuses on Einstein's theory of general relativity. He describes Einstein's recognition that gravity "is not diffused through space [but] is that space itself" as "a stroke of pure genius." In the second lesson, Rovelli deals with the puzzling features of quantum physics that challenge our picture of reality. In the remaining sections, the author introduces the constant fluctuations of atoms, the granular nature of space, and more. "It is hardly surprising that there are more things in heaven and earth, dear reader, than have been dreamed of in our philosophy—or in our physics,” he writes. Rovelli also discusses the issues raised in loop quantum gravity, a theory that he co-developed. These issues lead to his extraordinary claim that the passage of time is not fundamental but rather derived from the granular nature of space. The author suggests that there have been two separate pathways throughout human history: mythology and the accumulation of knowledge through observation. He believes that scientists today share the same curiosity about nature exhibited by early man.
An intriguing meditation on the nature of the universe and our attempts to understand it that should appeal to both scientists and general readers.Pub Date: March 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-399-18441-3
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The Johnstown Flood was one of the greatest natural disasters of all time (actually manmade, since it was precipitated by a wealthy country club dam which had long been the source of justified misgivings). This then is a routine rundown of the catastrophe of May 31st, 1889, the biggest news story since Lincoln's murder in which thousands died. The most interesting incidental: a baby floated unharmed in its cradle for eighty miles.... Perhaps of local interest-but it lacks the Lord-ly touch.
Pub Date: March 18, 1968
ISBN: 0671207148
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1968
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