A thoughtful and imaginative tour of the Alaskan landscape, past and present, by a laureate of the tundra. In 1899, writes Lord (Fishcamp: My Life on an Alaskan Shore, 1997), —the Bill Gates of a century ago,— Edward H. Harriman, funded an exotic dream vacation for himself: he fitted a steamship —with motor launches and canoes, a piano and organ, weaponry for hunting, horses and tents, cases of champagne and the requisite thin-stemmed glasses, a library, the latest audio and visual equipment,— along with a 65-man crew and the livestock to feed them. Added to this roster were some of the nation’s leading naturalists, writers, and artists—C. Hart Merriam, the mammalogist and head of the US Biological Survey; Edward Curtis, the photographer of American Indian life; George Bird Grinnell, editor of Field and Stream and a founder of the Audubon Society; John Muir, the naturalist and wilderness philosopher; and John Burroughs, also a naturalist, who was one of the country’s most popular writers. Lord reconstructs their witty and learned journey as this latter-day Solon and his entourage traveled across the Far North, calling on native fishing villages and gold-rush camps, collecting samples of animal and bird life that would enrich the holdings of the Smithsonian Institution and other museums, and chronicling all that they saw. Lord has no small adventures herself as she retraces the Harriman Expedition’s steps, including a memorable encounter with a grizzly bear; she also notes all that has disappeared in the century since the Harriman party came to Alaska, including many species and many Native American cultures and languages. A beautifully written contribution to what might be called the literary history of science, on a par with Ivan Doig’s Winter Brothers and Barry Lopez’s Arctic Dreams.
Pub Date: May 1, 1999
ISBN: 1-58243-002-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Counterpoint
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1999
A quirky wonder of a book.
A Peabody Award–winning NPR science reporter chronicles the life of a turn-of-the-century scientist and how her quest led to significant revelations about the meaning of order, chaos, and her own existence.
Miller began doing research on David Starr Jordan (1851-1931) to understand how he had managed to carry on after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroyed his work. A taxonomist who is credited with discovering “a full fifth of fish known to man in his day,” Jordan had amassed an unparalleled collection of ichthyological specimens. Gathering up all the fish he could save, Jordan sewed the nameplates that had been on the destroyed jars directly onto the fish. His perseverance intrigued the author, who also discusses the struggles she underwent after her affair with a woman ended a heterosexual relationship. Born into an upstate New York farm family, Jordan attended Cornell and then became an itinerant scholar and field researcher until he landed at Indiana University, where his first ichthyological collection was destroyed by lightning. In between this catastrophe and others involving family members’ deaths, he reconstructed his collection. Later, he was appointed as the founding president of Stanford, where he evolved into a Machiavellian figure who trampled on colleagues and sang the praises of eugenics. Miller concludes that Jordan displayed the characteristics of someone who relied on “positive illusions” to rebound from disaster and that his stand on eugenics came from a belief in “a divine hierarchy from bacteria to humans that point[ed]…toward better.” Considering recent research that negates biological hierarchies, the author then suggests that Jordan’s beloved taxonomic category—fish—does not exist. Part biography, part science report, and part meditation on how the chaos that caused Miller’s existential misery could also bring self-acceptance and a loving wife, this unique book is an ingenious celebration of diversity and the mysterious order that underlies all existence.
A quirky wonder of a book.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6027-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
Unsentimental nature writing that sheds as much light on humans as on eels.
An account of the mysterious life of eels that also serves as a meditation on consciousness, faith, time, light and darkness, and life and death.
In addition to an intriguing natural history, Swedish journalist Svensson includes a highly personal account of his relationship with his father. The author alternates eel-focused chapters with those about his father, a man obsessed with fishing for this elusive creature. “I can’t recall us ever talking about anything other than eels and how to best catch them, down there by the stream,” he writes. “I can’t remember us speaking at all….Because we were in…a place whose nature was best enjoyed in silence.” Throughout, Svensson, whose beat is not biology but art and culture, fills his account with people: Aristotle, who thought eels emerged live from mud, “like a slithering, enigmatic miracle”; Freud, who as a teenage biologist spent months in Trieste, Italy, peering through a microscope searching vainly for eel testes; Johannes Schmidt, who for two decades tracked thousands of eels, looking for their breeding grounds. After recounting the details of the eel life cycle, the author turns to the eel in literature—e.g., in the Bible, Rachel Carson’s Under the Sea Wind, and Günter Grass’ The Tin Drum—and history. He notes that the Puritans would likely not have survived without eels, and he explores Sweden’s “eel coast” (what it once was and how it has changed), how eel fishing became embroiled in the Northern Irish conflict, and the importance of eel fishing to the Basque separatist movement. The apparent return to life of a dead eel leads Svensson to a consideration of faith and the inherent message of miracles. He warns that if we are to save this fascinating creature from extinction, we must continue to study it. His book is a highly readable place to begin learning.
Unsentimental nature writing that sheds as much light on humans as on eels.Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-296881-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
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