An exhilarating and informative look at the world’s forests and how we can help them thrive.
Environmental journalist Pearce returns with an exploration of what trees and forests do, how humans have used them, and what must be done to maintain them.
This book, writes Pearce—an environmental consultant for the New Statesman and author of The Land Grabbers and The New Wild, among other ecology-focused books—“is about the magic and mystery of trees and forests, about their defenders and plunderers, and why they matter for the planet and for all of us.” Across 20 chapters, the author, who has reported from more than 60 countries for the Guardian, Washington Post, and other publications, demonstrates the significance of forests and reports on their historical and current health, how nature has been slowly rewilding forests throughout the world, the devastating effects of wildfires, and the concrete steps we must take to ensure forests’ vitality. Pearce takes us across the world, from “the cloud forests of the Ecuadorian Andes” to “the radioactive (but otherwise healthy) forests around Chernobyl in Ukraine; to the swamp forests of Indonesia and the community forests of the Himalayas; to the acid-rain-ravaged forests of central Europe and the pine forests in the American Deep South being cut to keep the lights on in Britain.” The author showcases countless natural wonderlands, all the while educating readers on the effects of our lifestyles on their health, and he investigates many long-held beliefs that may require deeper study—e.g., the idea that we can solve our climate crisis simply by planting trees. Though Pearce tempers his optimism with hard science, his enthusiasm is infectious, whether he’s reporting on acid rain in central Europe, surveying rampant devastation throughout the Amazon, celebrating the “multicolored magnificence of New England in the autumn,” or exploring “the remains of a largely unknown ancient forest civilization in Nigeria.”
An exhilarating and informative look at the world’s forests and how we can help them thrive.Pub Date: April 26, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-77164-940-7
Page Count: 344
Publisher: Greystone Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 24, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2022
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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