Enlightening and full of suspense.
An examination of the underground world of alligator poaching in Florida.
In her debut, National Geographic contributor Renner takes us into the Everglades in an attempt to challenge preconceptions about the area. Growing up in central Florida, “one of the most biodiverse places in the country,” she was only 7 when she saw her first wild alligator. However, to her friends outside the South, her fascination with these majestic creatures and the landscape in which they live seemed unusual. “Outsiders only see the death, the decay, the unruly rawness of this wild country,” writes the author, “without seeing the beauty in it, much to our harm and the detriment of this world.” Combining her skills for investigative reporting, nature writing, and personal anecdotes, Renner explores local folklore and legends, shares her personal experiences and observations, and details Operation Alligator Thief, which fights poaching. “I wanted to understand what it was like to be a poacher in the glades. I wanted to live the lives of rangers and wildlife officers, too,” writes Renner. “I wanted to tell a story of people. No heroes, no villains, just the desperate choices that make us who we are.” The primary character is Jeff Babauta, a wildlife officer who assumed the identity of Curtis Blackledge and built Sunshine Alligator Farm in order to infiltrate the poaching community. Throughout, Renner chronicles the constant physical and mental strain that Babauta was under during his operation to save the alligators, as well as his biggest fear: “that nobody would care.” The author also relates the internal conflict that Babauta felt when he faced a man who was poaching in order to feed his family. Renner’s passion for her home state, compassion for those less fortunate, and gift of storytelling make this book difficult to put down.
Enlightening and full of suspense.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2023
ISBN: 9781250842572
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
An important dialogue at a fraught time, emphasizing mutual candor, curiosity, and respect.
Two bestselling authors engage in an enlightening back-and-forth about Jewishness and antisemitism.
Acho, author of Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man, and Tishby, author of Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth, discuss many of the searing issues for Jews today, delving into whether Jewishness is a religion, culture, ethnicity, or community—or all of the above. As Tishby points out, unlike in Christianity, one can be comfortably atheist and still be considered a Jew. She defines Judaism as a “big tent” religion with four main elements: religion, peoplehood, nationhood, and the idea of tikkun olam (“repairing the world through our actions”). She addresses candidly the hurtful stereotypes about Jews (that they are rich and powerful) that Acho grew up with in Dallas and how Jews internalize these antisemitic judgments. Moreover, Tishby notes, “it is literally impossible to be Jewish and not have any connection with Israel, and I’m not talking about borders or a dot on the map. Judaism…is an indigenous religion.” Acho wonders if one can legitimately criticize “Jewish people and their ideologies” without being antisemitic, and Tishby offers ways to check whether one’s criticism of Jews or Zionism is antisemitic or factually straightforward. The authors also touch on the deteriorating relationship between Black and Jewish Americans, despite their historically close alliance during the civil rights era. “As long as Jewish people get to benefit from appearing white while Black people have to suffer for being Black, there will always be resentment,” notes Acho. “Because the same thing that grants you all access—your skin color—is what grants us pain and punishment in perpetuity.” Finally, the authors underscore the importance of being mutual allies, and they conclude with helpful indexes on vernacular terms and customs.
An important dialogue at a fraught time, emphasizing mutual candor, curiosity, and respect.Pub Date: April 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781668057858
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Simon Element
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A welcome call to grow up and cut out the whining.
The New York Times columnist serves up a cogent argument for shelving the grudge and sucking it up.
In 1976, Tom Wolfe described the “me decade” as a pit of mindless narcissism. A half century later, Bruni, author of Born Round and other bestselling books, calls for a renaming: “‘Me Turning Point’ would have been more accurate, because the period of time since has been a nonstop me jamboree.” Our present cultural situation, he notes, is marked by constant grievance and endless grasping. The ensuing blame game has its pros. Donald Trump, he notes, “became a victor by playing the victim, and his most impassioned oratory, such as it was, focused not on the good that he could do for others but on the bad supposedly done to him.” Bruni is an unabashed liberal, and while he places most of the worst behavior on the right—he opens with Sean Hannity’s bleating lie that the Biden administration was diverting scarce baby formula from needy Americans to illegal immigrants—he also allows that the left side of the aisle has committed its share of whining. A case in point: the silencing of a professor for showing an image of Mohammed to art students, neither religiously proscribed nor done without ample warning, but complained about by self-appointed student censors. Still, “not all grievances are created equal,” he writes. “There is January 6, 2021, and there is everything else. Attempts by leaders on the right to minimize what happened that day and lump it together with protests on the left are as ludicrous as they are dangerous.” Whether from left or right, Bruni calls for a dose of humility on the part of all: “an amalgam of kindness, openness, and silliness might be an effective solvent for grievance.”
A welcome call to grow up and cut out the whining.Pub Date: April 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781668016435
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 24, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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