A superb and concise bird compendium.
Author-illustrator and conservationist McMullan, with collaborators Derek Sallmann and Ryan Sallmann, offers a wide-ranging illustrated overview of birds in 49 U.S. states and Canada.
The book covers more than 1,000 avian varieties on the North American continent, including all of the United States except Hawaii. Birds are arranged by order and family, but readers may easily search for their common English-language names in an index. The authors describe each bird’s habitat range in detail and accompany it with a map inset, color-coded to show where the bird can be found at which time of year. The text descriptions of species are precise, thorough, and often unexpectedly expressive: a graylag goose, for instance, is said to have the “familiar cackling brays of the farmyard goose” while cedar waxwings are described as “the most bacchanalian of birds,” due to their penchant for getting intoxicated by eating fermented fruit. In a guide such as this, readers should expect detailed graphics of various species, and this book delivers full-color illustrations comparing adult and juvenile plumage, as well as male and female variations. When birds closely resemble other varieties, the authors helpfully show the creatures side-by-side and highlight their distinctness under a “What’s the Difference?” heading. For example, the Savannah sparrow may be identified by a dark eyestripe and buff lines, while a Baird’s sparrow has white lines and no eyestripe. In addition, the book features a glossary of terms, useful maps, and a diagram of the different parts of a bird. At a time when many birders rely on identification apps—some of which can pinpoint an avian species in seconds—a guide like this may seem obsolete. For many enthusiasts, though, it will surely evoke the ineffable pleasure, often established in childhood, of opening an artfully executed reference book and losing oneself in its knowledge. In the preface, the authors express their belief that “birding is an activity that can make people happier”; a guide like this is sure to bring readers hours of delight, whether they’re outside with a pair of binoculars or simply sitting at home.
A superb and concise bird compendium.Pub Date: March 25, 2025
ISBN: 9781784275426
Page Count: 376
Publisher: Pelagic Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 24, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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SEEN & HEARD
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.
A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting.
To call Elon Musk (b. 1971) “mercurial” is to undervalue the term; to call him a genius is incorrect. Instead, Musk has a gift for leveraging the genius of others in order to make things work. When they don’t, writes eminent biographer Isaacson, it’s because the notoriously headstrong Musk is so sure of himself that he charges ahead against the advice of others: “He does not like to share power.” In this sharp-edged biography, the author likens Musk to an earlier biographical subject, Steve Jobs. Given Musk’s recent political turn, born of the me-first libertarianism of the very rich, however, Henry Ford also comes to mind. What emerges clearly is that Musk, who may or may not have Asperger’s syndrome (“Empathy did not come naturally”), has nurtured several obsessions for years, apart from a passion for the letter X as both a brand and personal name. He firmly believes that “all requirements should be treated as recommendations”; that it is his destiny to make humankind a multi-planetary civilization through innovations in space travel; that government is generally an impediment and that “the thought police are gaining power”; and that “a maniacal sense of urgency” should guide his businesses. That need for speed has led to undeniable successes in beating schedules and competitors, but it has also wrought disaster: One of the most telling anecdotes in the book concerns Musk’s “demon mode” order to relocate thousands of Twitter servers from Sacramento to Portland at breakneck speed, which trashed big parts of the system for months. To judge by Isaacson’s account, that may have been by design, for Musk’s idea of creative destruction seems to mean mostly chaos.
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9781982181284
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
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