The book doesn’t contain an underlying theme, and Atkins learns most of his history and science from books, but he has an...
A wide-ranging travelogue, covering eight deserts, interspersed with historical accounts of desert geography and travel.
Making up one-sixth of our planet’s land, deserts have fascinated writers since the dawn of Christianity, a group that includes Atkins (The Moor: A Journey into the English Wilderness, 2014), the former editorial director of Pan Macmillan UK. A lucid observer, the author chronicles his travels through the world’s most arid lands, ruminating on their history, natural history, ongoing conditions, and mostly discouraging future. Viewing the world through British eyes, he makes a beeline for the first of his eight deserts, the great Empty Quarter of Saudi Arabia and Oman, a destination of the author’s most flamboyant countrymen, from T.E. Lawrence to Harry St. John Philby, whose paths he has tried to follow. Next up is Australia’s Great Victorian Desert, still partly off-limits as a result of 1950s British nuclear tests and home to a large Indigenous population ejected from their lands to accommodate the tests. No one was ejected from the Kyzylkum Desert in central Asia, but the population was impoverished as Soviet irrigation emptied the Aral Sea. American readers will enjoy the absence of depressing news from Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, and they will also find an account of the nostalgic wackiness of the Burning Man festival. In the Great Sonoran Desert to the southwest, thousands of migrants have died trying to reach the United States. Atkins describes activists who set out water and provisions deep in the desert and the vigilantes and Border Patrol agents who destroy them. Each section begins with a detailed map to help situate readers in the region.
The book doesn’t contain an underlying theme, and Atkins learns most of his history and science from books, but he has an acute eye and delivers unrelated but satisfying journalistic accounts of the world’s hottest, driest regions.Pub Date: July 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-385-53988-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2018
Yet another Kennedy bio from the school of journalism that mistakes an avalanche of minutiae for the thoughtful examination of a life. No irrelevant detail—from the length of her skirts to the thank-you notes she sent her dressmaker—escapes examination in this account of Ethel Kennedy's life. If Oppenheimer (Barbara Walters, 1990, etc.) has a point of view, it seems to be that being rich and famous is hell, and it is hell squared if you're both a Skakel and a Kennedy. A brief review of Ethel's ancestors takes the reader back to Yazoo County, Miss., and her great-grandfather, who was one of 11 children. Ethel herself was one of seven in an unruly tribe, wealthy and privileged but undisciplined. Her brothers terrorized Greenwich, Conn., with their antics, as some of Ethel's 11 children would later terrorize Hyannis Port, Mass., and Hickory Hill, Va. The young Ethel was nevertheless a good fit for the Kennedy family. Athletic, schooled by the nuns of the Sacred Heart (as were Rose and her daughters) to give husband and children priority in life, she was an exuberant, extroverted complement to the sometimes melancholy Robert F. Kennedy. She also bravely faced tragic loss—her parents, her brother, her brother-in-law, her husband, a son. But she was a notorious penny-pincher, could be vindictive and unreasonably demanding, and was given to rages after Bobby's assassination. That her flaws and her family scandals overshadow her virtues and accomplishments make this unrewarding reading. Arranging index cards in the right order does not make for enlightening biography. With her children leading relatively useful lives and with a personal history of philanthropic activism, Ethel deserves better. (16 pages b&w photos, not seen) ($150,000 ad/promo)
Pub Date: Sept. 23, 1994
ISBN: 0-312-11040-5
Page Count: 521
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
Ape-language specialist Savage-Rumbaugh and science writer Lewin (co-author of Origins with Richard Leakey, 1977) run the superchimp Kanzi past us once again with this latest in the current deluge of books on animal brain power. Kanzi—already a phenom with Newsweek, Time, and National Geographic covers to his credit—is an ape with a mind of his own; his facility with communication (via a special keyboard) is a marvel. But Kanzi gets only limited airtime here; he's more like a sideshow barker's prop to entice the customers. The authors spend most of the book going over the history of ape-language research (and it does go back: Samuel Pepys's name is mentioned), briefly rummage in linguistic theory (long enough to unconvincingly trash Noam Chomsky), and visit with other ape subjects. When it comes to the use of language by the great apes, the jury is still out; they might have even gone home. Theorists continue to debate the importance of production versus comprehension, to dispute intentionality, to worry about an ape's reflectiveness. It is to Savage-Rumbaugh's credit that she gives as much importance to glances, gestures, and postures as communicative modes as she does to utterances and keyboard talent. It seems quite clear that the apes have no interest in joining the Yale debating squad, so why put them to that measure? When Kanzi is brought into the story, the tone lightens. He is a clever, humorous, astonishing character, and his developing relationship with Savage-Rumbaugh is where Lewin really shines. The quickly sketched vignettes are uniformly winning: For instance, Savage-Rumbaugh has her keys snatched by an obstreperous member of the ape troupe. She asks Kanzi to get them back. He shuffles over to the offending ape, murmurs in his ear, and the keys are returned forthwith. Call this effort ``Notes Toward an Understanding,'' for every theory is conjecture, but there are also many fine nuggets to be mined. (Photos, not seen) (First serial to Discover)
Pub Date: Oct. 21, 1994
ISBN: 0-471-58591-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Wiley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
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