A cogent environmentally oriented collection, centered on the Sri Lankan culture and landscape.
A Sri Lankan author and photographer marries spirituality, science, and art appreciation in his meditations on culture, colonization, and the survival of life on Earth.
In the preface to this eclectic debut anthology, de Soysa argues that people are using the earth’s resources “for the selfish benefit of humans only.” That comment is a neat statement of the theme of the pieces that follow: articles, lectures, memoirs, essays, and tales, punctuated by 68 of de Soysa’s photographs. Originally conceived as a private publication for his children and grandchildren, the work is a manifesto of de Soysa’s personal, political, and spiritual philosophies as well as his respect for the natural world and his knowledge of innovative midcentury art movements in Sri Lanka. In “What is Our Real Ancestry?” he combines Eastern thought with science, writing that Earth “is the only planet where the elements of fire, earth, air, and water are in dynamic equilibrium.” “Becoming: Colombo Art Biennale 2012” is an affectionate profile of the artists who developed a modernist art movement grounded in Sri Lankan culture, while “Mihithala Mithuro Twentieth Anniversary” argues for the importance of environmental activism in Sri Lanka. “London to Colombo by Car” is a vivid description of an adventurous journey, viewed through the lens of memory. De Soysa’s narrative voice is warm and sincere and his photographs have the informal immediacy of personal snapshots that loop the reader into this captivating family narrative. Although the message of environmental urgency is repeated frequently, it is presented with rationality and clarity in such pithy statements as, “The world of humans is no longer living within its ecological income but is using up the life-giving ecological capital.” His solutions, too, are succinct. They include “restore the forest cover to at least 50 per cent,” “limit our wants,” and “wean the global economy away from its demand for ever-increasing growth.”
A cogent environmentally oriented collection, centered on the Sri Lankan culture and landscape.Pub Date: Feb. 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5437-4793-5
Page Count: 140
Publisher: PartridgeSingapore
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.
An experimental, illustrated essay collection that questions neurotypical definitions of what is normal.
From a young age, writer and comedian Myers has been different. In addition to coping with obsessive compulsive disorder and panic attacks, she struggled to read basic social cues. During a round of seven minutes in heaven—a game in which two players spend seven minutes in a closet and are expected to kiss—Myers misread the romantic advances of her best friend and longtime crush, Marley. In Paris, she accidentally invited a sex worker to join her friends for “board games and beer,” thinking he was simply a random stranger who happened to be hitting on her. In community college, a stranger’s request for a pen spiraled her into a panic attack but resulted in a tentative friendship. When the author moved to Australia, she began taking notes on her colleagues in an effort to know them better. As the author says to her co-worker, Tabitha, “there are unspoken social contracts within a workplace that—by some miracle—everyone else already understands, and I don’t….When things Go Without Saying, they Never Get Said, and sometimes people need you to Say Those Things So They Understand What The Hell Is Going On.” At its best, Myers’ prose is vulnerable and humorous, capturing characterization in small but consequential life moments, and her illustrations beautifully complement the text. Unfortunately, the author’s tendency toward unnecessary capitalization and experimental forms is often unsuccessful, breaking the book’s otherwise steady rhythm.
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9780063381308
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.
Avuncular observations on matters historical from the late popularizer of the past.
McCullough made a fine career of storytelling his way through past events and the great men (and occasional woman) of long-ago American history. In that regard, to say nothing of his eschewing modern technology in favor of the typewriter (“I love the way the bell rings every time I swing the carriage lever”), he might be thought of as belonging to a past age himself. In this set of occasional pieces, including various speeches and genial essays on what to read and how to write, he strikes a strong tone as an old-fashioned moralist: “Indifference to history isn’t just ignorant, it’s rude,” he thunders. “It’s a form of ingratitude.” There are some charming reminiscences in here. One concerns cajoling his way into a meeting with Arthur Schlesinger in order to pitch a speech to presidential candidate John F. Kennedy: Where Richard Nixon “has no character and no convictions,” he opined, Kennedy “is appealing to our best instincts.” McCullough allows that it wasn’t the strongest of ideas, but Schlesinger told him to write up a speech anyway, and when it got to Kennedy, “he gave a speech in which there was one paragraph that had once sentence written by me.” Some of McCullough’s appreciations here are of writers who are not much read these days, such as Herman Wouk and Paul Horgan; a long piece concerns a president who’s been largely lost in the shuffle too, Harry Truman, whose decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan McCullough defends. At his best here, McCullough uses history as a way to orient thinking about the present, and with luck to good ends: “I am a short-range pessimist and a long-range optimist. I sincerely believe that we may be on the way to a very different and far better time.”
A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781668098998
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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