An insightful memoir on one man’s quest to know living birds by examining those birds that have ceased to exist.
A new birder discovers a fascination with extinct birds.
Hollars’ (English/Univ. of Wisconsin, Eau Claire; This Is Only a Test, 2016, etc.) fascination with birds, living and dead, began with the possible rediscovery of the ivory-billed woodpecker, long thought extinct, in the swamps of Arkansas. Similar in size and coloring to the pileated woodpecker, the ivory-billed woodpecker was hunted for its feathers and meat to the point of annihilation. Through books and interviews with ornithologists, Hollars tracks the saga and demise of this particular woodpecker, which leads him deeper into the extinct-bird arena. He muses on passenger pigeons, once numbering in the billions, a lone pair of goshawks discovered in 1935 and the hermit who lived in the Wisconsin wilderness and tried to protect them, and the dusky seaside sparrow, which was wiped out in part due to the building of the Kennedy Space Center. He examines the early methods humans used to study birds—shoot, stuff, draw, and/or paint likenesses—that eventually caused the birds’ demise and juxtaposes those with the joy birders feel when they add a bird to a life list. Hollars also shares the awe he felt when he finally saw and held the elusive ivory-billed woodpecker (even if it was a stuffed specimen in a dusty museum drawer). Although the text is a bit dry, birders and naturalists will enjoy the author’s descriptions of birds and their environments; his writing clearly displays his enthusiasm for the subject, and he balances it nicely with historical research embedded throughout each chapter. The author’s examination of extinct birds can only raise awareness and concern for the species that are still on this planet.
An insightful memoir on one man’s quest to know living birds by examining those birds that have ceased to exist.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-8032-9642-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Univ. of Nebraska
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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