Jaunty, artless dispatches from some very unusual skiing locales—Iran, northwestern China, Bolivia, etc.—by outdoor writer Finkel. The most outrageous skiing venues are Finkel’s chosen terrain, and as skiing is often an unknown activity thereabouts, he fancies himself part powderhound ambassador without portfolio, part merry prankster, forever trying to ignite a gag about the circumstances. It feels almost accidental that he also conveys a sense of the remote, or at least wild, landscapes he engages with, but he does, after a fashion: a roof-of-the-world herder’s encampment where he gives ski lessons to Kazakh horsemen; a flash down the snowcap of Kilimanjaro; the northern lights zapping his circuitry as he skis the night above Yellowknife; hairy tree-dodging on the diamond slopes of Mad River Glen in the Green Mountain State; testing the properties of friction on the PVC bristles in the Pentland Hills of Scotland, where people ski despite the absence of snow, and where his tumble “was relatively minor, though remarkably painful,” and “a vicious fall can not only leave permanent scars but also destroy a ski outfit.” Finkel doesn—t display a subtle intellect in his writing; he reports things as he sees them, which can be refreshingly without pretense and maddeningly ignorant, the result being ahistorical, decontextualized snapshots that suffer from frivolity when overexposed. His visit to the ski resorts north of Tehran is a rich opportunity to investigate the diverse culture of the slopes, but he squanders it with a litany of old jokes about Islamic restrictions. Then he will redeem himself with some straight reportage on snowboarding the verticalities—rock-strewn deeply crevassed 60-degree slopes—of Alaska’s Chugach range, or a disarming tale of off-piste powder runs in the north of Iceland. Finally, Finkel’s adventures, no doubt fertile ground for soul-stirring, life-changing episodes, come off as unadorned tomfoolery.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1999
ISBN: 1-55821-942-2
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Lyons Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1999
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
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
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