A vigorously told story of environmental activism that has succeeded despite the odds and an engaging journey into some of...
Novelist Malarkey (Resurrection, 2006, etc.) turns to nonfiction in this account of a single-minded cousin who’s bent on saving salmon and their habitat from humankind.
Guido Rahr was always a little odd, writes the author. As a very young child, for instance, “he had an aversion to reading, and to any book that didn’t involve pictures of reptiles.” He was diagnosed as dyslexic but, after memorizing a vast academic tome on North American reptilia, overcame it—and, though never particularly numerate, he went on to devour whole libraries of science writing while making it clear that he didn’t have much use for civilization. Yale wasn’t easy, though in an early encounter with the institution, he produced a faunal map that a visiting professor spirited away; other people weren’t easy, though he did find a “near perfect alignment” with a kindred spirit; nothing came easily to Rahr except the desire to slip away into the woods and wetlands and commune with nature. It seems almost inevitable, then, that he should have cast his lot with the wild. In this eminently inspirational story, Malarkey chronicles how his battle settled on the anadromous salmon and the places where it was most in danger of disappearing. The contours of this battle shift to the north and west as the story progresses, crossing the Bering Sea to Kamchatka, and encompass unlikely alliances with oligarchs such as the steel magnate Alexander Abramov, who, Malarkey writes, “conveyed the power of an apex predator” while scorning the thought that things like treaties and regulations mean anything to the commercial fisheries that seem bent on reducing the salmon to a memory. Yet Abramov joined in, spending $45 million to remove poachers from a single wild river that now stands at the heart of the work of Rahr’s Wild Salmon Center—work, Malarkey writes, that has hinged on “raising the issue of conservation above geopolitics.”
A vigorously told story of environmental activism that has succeeded despite the odds and an engaging journey into some of the planet’s wilder places.Pub Date: July 23, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-984801-69-2
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 6, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A quirky wonder of a book.
A Peabody Award–winning NPR science reporter chronicles the life of a turn-of-the-century scientist and how her quest led to significant revelations about the meaning of order, chaos, and her own existence.
Miller began doing research on David Starr Jordan (1851-1931) to understand how he had managed to carry on after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroyed his work. A taxonomist who is credited with discovering “a full fifth of fish known to man in his day,” Jordan had amassed an unparalleled collection of ichthyological specimens. Gathering up all the fish he could save, Jordan sewed the nameplates that had been on the destroyed jars directly onto the fish. His perseverance intrigued the author, who also discusses the struggles she underwent after her affair with a woman ended a heterosexual relationship. Born into an upstate New York farm family, Jordan attended Cornell and then became an itinerant scholar and field researcher until he landed at Indiana University, where his first ichthyological collection was destroyed by lightning. In between this catastrophe and others involving family members’ deaths, he reconstructed his collection. Later, he was appointed as the founding president of Stanford, where he evolved into a Machiavellian figure who trampled on colleagues and sang the praises of eugenics. Miller concludes that Jordan displayed the characteristics of someone who relied on “positive illusions” to rebound from disaster and that his stand on eugenics came from a belief in “a divine hierarchy from bacteria to humans that point[ed]…toward better.” Considering recent research that negates biological hierarchies, the author then suggests that Jordan’s beloved taxonomic category—fish—does not exist. Part biography, part science report, and part meditation on how the chaos that caused Miller’s existential misery could also bring self-acceptance and a loving wife, this unique book is an ingenious celebration of diversity and the mysterious order that underlies all existence.
A quirky wonder of a book.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6027-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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
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