As popular natural histories go, Alexander's is a yeoman's work, with enough telling details to give the elephant a justly...
An entertaining albeit at times overengrossed portrait—cultural, physiological, historical—of the elephant.
Since she can remember, Alexander (Happy Days, 1995) has been hooked on elephants. This then is her tribute to the great pachyderms, an Everyman's natural history that throws them in very winning light: ``They have essential nobility, serenity, sagacity, loyalty and playfulness, a simple goodness, a lack of animosity . . . they convey a sense of perfect beings.'' In an effort to embed this sentiment in the reader's mind, Alexander pursues both anecdotal and scientific tacks. The anecdotal material is delivered with a suave assurance. There is the mythic and nearmythic—the elephant dream of the Buddha's mother, the mammoths of Paleolithic cave art, and Hannibal's driving the beasts over the Alps (even if ``it is not clear what [Hannibal's] object was in bringing the elephants with him'')—and there are the plentiful zoo and circus stories, many of which are exemplars in displaying humans as the elephants' worst enemy (among the grotesqueries: tickets were sold to attend the electrocutions of rogue circus elephants). When Alexander hits scientific ground, she is less sure about what to include, so she tosses in everything. Her coverage of the zoological and conservation work of the DouglasHamiltons is intriguing, as is the research work of Cynthia Moss and Katy Payne. But when it comes to temperature inversions enhancing sound propagation, transrectal ultrasound probes, the importance of knowing that elephants have four salivary glands, and the like, the focus reaches critical mass and burns its connection with the intended lay readership. Her message of the elephants' peril—a result of poaching and habitat loss for both the Asian and African species—hits home hard, perhaps the most important element of the book.
As popular natural histories go, Alexander's is a yeoman's work, with enough telling details to give the elephant a justly unique, mesmeric image. (16-page photo insert, not seen)Pub Date: May 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-679-45660-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
Unsentimental nature writing that sheds as much light on humans as on eels.
An account of the mysterious life of eels that also serves as a meditation on consciousness, faith, time, light and darkness, and life and death.
In addition to an intriguing natural history, Swedish journalist Svensson includes a highly personal account of his relationship with his father. The author alternates eel-focused chapters with those about his father, a man obsessed with fishing for this elusive creature. “I can’t recall us ever talking about anything other than eels and how to best catch them, down there by the stream,” he writes. “I can’t remember us speaking at all….Because we were in…a place whose nature was best enjoyed in silence.” Throughout, Svensson, whose beat is not biology but art and culture, fills his account with people: Aristotle, who thought eels emerged live from mud, “like a slithering, enigmatic miracle”; Freud, who as a teenage biologist spent months in Trieste, Italy, peering through a microscope searching vainly for eel testes; Johannes Schmidt, who for two decades tracked thousands of eels, looking for their breeding grounds. After recounting the details of the eel life cycle, the author turns to the eel in literature—e.g., in the Bible, Rachel Carson’s Under the Sea Wind, and Günter Grass’ The Tin Drum—and history. He notes that the Puritans would likely not have survived without eels, and he explores Sweden’s “eel coast” (what it once was and how it has changed), how eel fishing became embroiled in the Northern Irish conflict, and the importance of eel fishing to the Basque separatist movement. The apparent return to life of a dead eel leads Svensson to a consideration of faith and the inherent message of miracles. He warns that if we are to save this fascinating creature from extinction, we must continue to study it. His book is a highly readable place to begin learning.
Unsentimental nature writing that sheds as much light on humans as on eels.Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-296881-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
Drawings, words, and a few photos combine to convey the depth of a tragedy that would leave most people dumbstruck.
A new life and book arise from the ashes of a devastating California wildfire.
These days, it seems the fires will never end. They wreaked destruction over central California in the latter months of 2018, dominating headlines for weeks, barely a year after Fies (Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow?, 2009) lost nearly everything to the fires that raged through Northern California. The result is a vividly journalistic graphic narrative of resilience in the face of tragedy, an account of recent history that seems timely as ever. “A two-story house full of our lives was a two-foot heap of dead smoking ash,” writes the author about his first return to survey the damage. The matter-of-fact tone of the reportage makes some of the flights of creative imagination seem more extraordinary—particularly a nihilistic, two-page centerpiece of a psychological solar system in which “the fire is our black hole,” and “some veer too near and are drawn into despair, depression, divorce, even suicide,” while “others are gravitationally flung entirely out of our solar system to other cities or states, and never seen again.” Yet the stories that dominate the narrative are those of the survivors, who were part of the community and would be part of whatever community would be built to take its place across the charred landscape. Interspersed with the author’s own account are those from others, many retirees, some suffering from physical or mental afflictions. Each is rendered in a couple pages of text except one from a fellow cartoonist, who draws his own. The project began with an online comic when Fies did the only thing he could as his life was reduced to ash and rubble. More than 3 million readers saw it; this expanded version will hopefully extend its reach.
Drawings, words, and a few photos combine to convey the depth of a tragedy that would leave most people dumbstruck.Pub Date: March 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3585-1
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Abrams ComicArts
Review Posted Online: Nov. 25, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2018
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