An intimate and informative journey.
A nature writer and hunting and fishing podcaster offers an account of his travels in and the history of American public lands.
American citizens, writes Kenyon, “are collective co-owners of…approximately 640 million acres” of land designated for outdoor recreational activities like camping, hiking, hunting, and fishing. In his first book, the author explores a variety of federally protected natural areas, including Yellowstone National Park, Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, and Arches National Park, while delving into the embattled history of America’s wild places. Born into a family of Michigan hunters and anglers, Kenyon’s passion for the outdoors developed after college. His research into American public lands transformed him into a political advocate who, over the course of 18 months, traveled across the United States to ground himself in the “national forests, monuments, wildlife refuges and wilderness…that hung in the balance.” Camping trips, like one he took through the “shimmering plains and badland buttes” of North Dakota’s Theodore Roosevelt National Park, made the author aware that such areas received federal protection only because champions like Roosevelt stood up to industrialists and developers who sought to use the land for profit. Laws, such as Roosevelt’s Antiquities Act of 1906, granted presidents sole executive power to “designate lands as having ‘historical landmarks, historic preservation structures and other objects of scientific interest.’ ” However, legislation has never guaranteed that natural areas would receive protected status or that lands with that status would remain safe from predation. Kenyon cites the case of the 1980s Sagebrush Rebellion, which sought to place control of federally protected Western lands into the hands of privatization-friendly state governments. The author also references Donald Trump’s legal encroachments on the Antiquities Act and reductions of such wilderness areas as the Bears Ears National Monument in Utah. Thoughtfully observed throughout, Kenyon’s book offers fond recollections of his experiences in the American outdoors while reminding readers of their obligation to protect their right to lands too often taken for granted.
An intimate and informative journey.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5420-4304-5
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Little A
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2019
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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