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END OF THE MEGAFAUNA

Name: END OF THE MEGAFAUNA
Author: Ross D.E. MacPhee
ISBN: 978-0-393-24929-3

THE FATE OF THE WORLD'S HUGEST, FIERCEST, AND STRANGEST ANIMALS

by Ross D.E. MacPhee ; illustrated by Peter Schouten ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 13, 2018

So why did all those critters go extinct? MacPhee suggests rather than asserts, but his book, featuring beautiful...

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Working the “borderland between archeology and paleontology,” a paleomammalogist examines a suite of causes for the extinction of large animals during the late Pleistocene.

In 1814, when John James Audubon observed a flock of passenger pigeons over the Ohio River, the population numbered in the untold billions. A century later, the last passenger pigeon died in a zoo. That, notes MacPhee (Race to the End: Amundsen, Scott, and the Attainment of the South Pole, 2010, etc.), who has worked at the American Museum of Natural History for three decades, is the “fastest decline on record for a vertebrate with an initially large population size”—and, he adds cautiously, the “most supported” cause is overhunting. Why the caution, when the historical record is full of accounts of passenger pigeons being blasted out of the sky? Because the author is wrestling with the thorny question of what brought on the deaths of so many large animals, including mastodons, marsupial lions, dodos, and baboon lemurs. In a noir film, the smoking gun would be in the hands of the humans who just happened to show around the time of extinction. In science, greater care must be taken in establishing causality, and even if MacPhee bridles at the line of argument established by Paul Martin and his followers blaming the megafaunal extinction on the human “blitzkrieg,” he at least includes human killing among the causes. Others factors include climate change, the collapse of food webs, and the introduction of invasive species. Concluding that there is no compelling common cause in the extinctions, MacPhee closes by considering the possibilities of genetically reviving lost species, or “de-extinction,” noting, finally, “it is to be hoped that any brave new creations can be integrated into existing ecosystems without destroying them—something we have been unable to do with ourselves, for at least the last 50,000 years."

So why did all those critters go extinct? MacPhee suggests rather than asserts, but his book, featuring beautiful illustrations from Schouten, adds thoughtful fuel to a scholarly debate that shows no signs of ending.

Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2018

ISBN: 978-0-393-24929-3

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Norton

Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018

Categories:

NATURE | SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

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DUMB LUCK AND THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS

by John Gierach illustrated by Glenn Wolff ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 2, 2020

In these insightfully droll essays, Gierach shows us how fishing offers plenty of time to think things over.

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The latest collection of interrelated essays by the veteran fishing writer.

As in his previous books—from The View From Rat Lake through All Fishermen Are Liars—Gierach hones in on the ups and downs of fishing, and those looking for how-to tips will find plenty here on rods, flies, guides, streams, and pretty much everything else that informs the fishing life. It is the everything else that has earned Gierach the following of fellow writers and legions of readers who may not even fish but are drawn to his musings on community, culture, the natural world, and the seasons of life. In one representatively poetic passage, he writes, “it was a chilly fall afternoon with the leaves changing, the current whispering, and a pale moon in a daytime sky. The river seemed inscrutable, but alive with possibility.” Gierach writes about both patience and process, and he describes the long spells between catches as the fisherman’s equivalent of writer’s block. Even when catching fish is the point, it almost seems beside the point (anglers will understand that sentiment): At the end of one essay, he writes, “I was cold, bored, hungry, and fishless, but there was still nowhere else I’d have rather been—something anyone who fishes will understand.” Most readers will be profoundly moved by the meditation on mortality within the blandly titled “Up in Michigan,” a character study of a man dying of cancer. Though the author had known and been fishing with him for three decades, his reticence kept anyone from knowing him too well. Still, writes Gierach, “I came to think of [his] glancing pronouncements as Michigan haiku: brief, no more than obliquely revealing, and oddly beautiful.” Ultimately, the man was focused on settling accounts, getting in one last fishing trip, and then planning to “sit in the sun and think things over until it’s time for hospice.”

In these insightfully droll essays, Gierach shows us how fishing offers plenty of time to think things over.

Pub Date: June 2, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-5011-6858-1

Page Count: 224

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: Jan. 21, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020

Categories:

NATURE | SPORTS & RECREATION

- BOOK REVIEW
ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD
by John Gierach

- BOOK REVIEW
ALL FISHERMEN ARE LIARS
by John Gierach

- BOOK REVIEW
NO SHORTAGE OF GOOD DAYS
by John Gierach

- IN THE NEWS
Author John Gierach Dies at 78

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THE INCREDIBLE JOURNEY OF PLANTS

by Stefano Mancuso translated by Gregory Conti illustrated by Grisha Fischer ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 17, 2020

An authoritative, engaging study of plant life, accessible to younger readers as well as adults.

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A neurobiologist reveals the interconnectedness of the natural world through stories of plant migration.

In this slim but well-packed book, Mancuso (Plant Science/Univ. of Florence; The Revolutionary Genius of Plants: A New Understanding of Plant Intelligence and Behavior, 2018, etc.) presents an illuminating and surprisingly lively study of plant life. He smoothly balances expansive historical exploration with recent scientific research through stories of how various plant species are capable of migrating to locations throughout the world by means of air, water, and even via animals. They often continue to thrive in spite of dire obstacles and environments. One example is the response of plants following the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Three decades later, the abandoned “Exclusion Zone” is now entirely covered by an enormous assortment of thriving plants. Mancuso also tracks the journeys of several species that might be regarded as invasive. “Why…do we insist on labeling as ‘invasive’ all those plants that, with great success, have managed to occupy new territories?” asks the author. “On a closer look, the invasive plants of today are the native flora of the future, just as the invasive species of the past are a fundamental part of our ecosystem today.” Throughout, Mancuso persuasively articulates why an understanding and appreciation of how nature is interconnected is vital to the future of our planet. “In nature everything is connected,” he writes. “This simple law that humans don’t seem to understand has a corollary: the extinction of a species, besides being a calamity in and of itself, has unforeseeable consequences for the system to which the species belongs.” The book is not without flaws. The loosely imagined watercolor renderings are vague and fail to effectively complement Mancuso’s richly descriptive prose or satisfy readers’ curiosity. Even without actual photos and maps, it would have been beneficial to readers to include more finely detailed plant and map renderings.

An authoritative, engaging study of plant life, accessible to younger readers as well as adults.