A fact-heavy specialist’s guide to improving wildfire policies in a rapidly warming world.
Auchterlonie and Lehman offer an overview of forest fire management on United States public forest land.
The authors begin their nonfiction debut starkly: “The Earth is on fire.” Wildfires, they report, raged on every continent in 2020 and destroyed nearly 1 billion acres, 10 million in the U.S. alone, an area the size of Maryland and Delaware combined. And the severity of the problem is only increasing: Since 1970, the annual average temperature in the U.S. has risen by nearly 2 degrees Fahrenheit; earlier snowmelt leads to drier forests, which result in more and worse fires. These fires have an enormous impact on wildland-urban interface areas, destroying thousands of homes and forcing thousands of people to evacuate. “Wildfires impact over half the landmass of the United States,” Auchterlonie and Lehman write. In a series of concise, well-documented, and superbly illustrated chapters (graphs, charts, and full-color photos run throughout the book), they describe the history of the government’s responses to such dangers and propose possible improvements to those measures. The authors bullet point many of their key statistics and walk readers through their sources, governmental and otherwise, the goal being always to inform, never to entertain: Readers will need to be significantly invested in the topic of wildfire prevention and control before they dive into what is essentially a protracted white paper on the subject. But Auchterlonie and Lehman are clearly not writing primarily with a general readership in mind; this text, with its prodigious facts and figures all carefully and colorfully laid out, is obviously intended for specialists, frontline responders, and, especially, policymakers who could improve laws and regulations regarding everything from forestry to response protocols. This should be required reading for every incoming U.S. secretary of the interior.
A fact-heavy specialist’s guide to improving wildfire policies in a rapidly warming world.Pub Date: July 31, 2023
ISBN: 9781637557839
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Amplify Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.
A charming bird journey with the bestselling author.
In his introduction to Tan’s “nature journal,” David Allen Sibley, the acclaimed ornithologist, nails the spirit of this book: a “collection of delightfully quirky, thoughtful, and personal observations of birds in sketches and words.” For years, Tan has looked out on her California backyard “paradise”—oaks, periwinkle vines, birch, Japanese maple, fuchsia shrubs—observing more than 60 species of birds, and she fashions her findings into delightful and approachable journal excerpts, accompanied by her gorgeous color sketches. As the entries—“a record of my life”—move along, the author becomes more adept at identifying and capturing them with words and pencils. Her first entry is September 16, 2017: Shortly after putting up hummingbird feeders, one of the tiny, delicate creatures landed on her hand and fed. “We have a relationship,” she writes. “I am in love.” By August 2018, her backyard “has become a menagerie of fledglings…all learning to fly.” Day by day, she has continued to learn more about the birds, their activities, and how she should relate to them; she also admits mistakes when they occur. In December 2018, she was excited to observe a Townsend’s Warbler—“Omigod! It’s looking at me. Displeased expression.” Battling pesky squirrels, Tan deployed Hot Pepper Suet to keep them away, and she deterred crows by hanging a fake one upside down. The author also declared war on outdoor cats when she learned they kill more than 1 billion birds per year. In May 2019, she notes that she spends $250 per month on beetle larvae. In June 2019, she confesses “spending more hours a day staring at birds than writing. How can I not?” Her last entry, on December 15, 2022, celebrates when an eating bird pauses, “looks and acknowledges I am there.”
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780593536131
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
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