by Ted Kerasote ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 1, 1993
A potent exploration of the gray line between ``sport'' and subsistence hunting. Kerasote (a Sports Afield columnist) begins by describing his stay with the Inuit of Greenland, who must hunt seal, cod, narwhal, and polar bear—or die; practically their only Western artifact is the rifle, used only in particularly dangerous situations. In language so brilliant and vivid that it puts the rest of his narrative in the shade, the author tells of four-day hunts on the edge of the ice pack with sled and dogs; the stalking of seals; and the sharing of a piece of steaming raw liver with his hunter-sponsor. Next up is Kerasote's visit with one of the world's greatest trophy hunters, Bob Kubick, who welcomes Kerasote into a veritable forest of heads in his house in Alaska. Kubick is a singular purist—one who, for example, has for days stalked a ram though the snow at 19,000 feet, only to pass up a shot because the prey was not perfect in some way. Kerasote then travels to Russia with a party of paying duffers who—to his revulsion—corral big-horn sheep with helicopters while their guides slaughter the hapless animals with submachine guns. Finally, the author spends several days debating the director of Cleveland Amory's Fund for Animals, Wayne Pacelle. When Pacelle inveighs that hunters contribute only about 3.5 percent of the cost of running the National Wildlife acreage, Kerasote gently reminds him that big-game hunter Teddy Roosevelt had 150 million acres set aside as a wildlife refuge. A winning hand of up-to-date cards in the deadly serious hunting game.
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-394-57609-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1993
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by Brian Fies illustrated by Brian Fies ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 5, 2019
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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by Helen Macdonald ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 3, 2015
Whether you call this a personal story or nature writing, it’s poignant, thoughtful and moving—and likely to become a...
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An inspired, beautiful and absorbing account of a woman battling grief—with a goshawk.
Following the sudden death of her father, Macdonald (History and Philosophy/Cambridge Univ.; Falcon, 2006, etc.) tried staving off deep depression with a unique form of personal therapy: the purchase and training of an English goshawk, which she named Mabel. Although a trained falconer, the author chose a raptor both unfamiliar and unpredictable, a creature of mad confidence that became a means of working against madness. “The hawk was everything I wanted to be: solitary, self-possessed, free from grief, and numb to the hurts of human life,” she writes. As a devotee of birds of prey since girlhood, Macdonald knew the legends and the literature, particularly the cautionary example of The Once and Future King author T.H. White, whose 1951 book The Goshawk details his own painful battle to master his title subject. Macdonald dramatically parallels her own story with White’s, achieving a remarkable imaginative sympathy with the writer, a lonely, tormented homosexual fighting his own sadomasochistic demons. Even as she was learning from White’s mistakes, she found herself very much in his shoes, watching her life fall apart as the painfully slow bonding process with Mabel took over. Just how much do animals and humans have in common? The more Macdonald got to know her, the more Mabel confounded her notions about what the species was supposed to represent. Is a hawk a symbol of might or independence, or is that just our attempt to remake the animal world in our own image? Writing with breathless urgency that only rarely skirts the melodramatic, Macdonald broadens her scope well beyond herself to focus on the antagonism between people and the environment.
Whether you call this a personal story or nature writing, it’s poignant, thoughtful and moving—and likely to become a classic in either genre.Pub Date: March 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0802123411
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2014
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