A well-researched concept that falls flat in the presentation.
A survey of the historical effects of climate on world religions.
In his latest, acclaimed religious scholar Jenkins looks at how climate change, broadly defined, has shaped movements in religion—mainly in the European realm but also around the globe. The author argues that by studying the past, we can make assumptions about the future of religious reactions to climate change. However, his forecasting is shaky, as the text becomes a catalog of natural catastrophes, each tenuously tied to its own corresponding historical horror. One of the author’s main narrative threads involves the unending string of catastrophes brought about by the long-running Little Ice Age, which lasted from the 1300s to the mid-1800s. Jenkins covers this period in a mesmerizing series of accounts of brutal winters and cold summers (along with the occasional drought), sometimes stretching on for years, bringing about hunger, poverty, and, inevitably, violence—particularly against Jews, Christian dissidents, and perceived witches, all of whom suffered due to a combination of economic tension and superstitious anger. Though it is common sense that severe changes in climate and weather patterns often lead to social change and unrest, the author’s attempts to tie nearly every important moment in European religion to climate issues—for instance, the rise of John Calvin’s theocracy in Geneva due to sunspot activity and Baltic Sea temperatures—will overwhelm most readers. Jenkins does incorporate other factors into his analysis, but he often forces the issue, overestimating the degree of causation between climate and “religious upheaval.” The author is also tripped up by the fact that climate change as he discusses it historically has entirely natural causes (volcanoes, El Niño, sunspots, etc.), whereas his predictions for the future are based on human-influenced climate change, the effects of which continue to expand and mutate.
A well-researched concept that falls flat in the presentation.Pub Date: May 11, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-19-750621-9
Page Count: 276
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
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Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.
Memories and life lessons inspired by the author’s mother, who was murdered in 2021.
“Neither my mother nor I knew that her last text to me would be the words ‘Think you’ll be happy,’ ” Avant writes, "but it is fitting that she left me with a mantra for resiliency.” The author, a filmmaker and former U.S. Ambassador to the Bahamas, begins her first book on the night she learned her mother, Jacqueline Avant, had been fatally shot during a home invasion. “One of my first thoughts,” she writes, “was, ‘Oh God, please don’t let me hate this man. Give me the strength not to hate him.’ ” Daughter of Clarence Avant, known as the “Black Godfather” due to his work as a pioneering music executive, the author describes growing up “in a house that had a revolving door of famous people,” from Ella Fitzgerald to Muhammad Ali. “I don’t take for granted anything I have achieved in my life as a Black American woman,” writes Avant. “And I recognize my unique upbringing…..I was taught to honor our past and pay forward our fruits.” The book, which is occasionally repetitive, includes tributes to her mother from figures like Oprah Winfrey and Bill Clinton, but the narrative core is the author’s direct, faith-based, unwaveringly positive messages to readers—e.g., “I don’t want to carry the sadness and anger I have toward the man who did this to my mother…so I’m worshiping God amid the worst storm imaginable”; "Success and feeling good are contagious. I’m all about positive contagious vibrations!” Avant frequently quotes Bible verses, and the bulk of the text reflects the spirit of her daily prayer “that everything is in divine order.” Imploring readers to practice proactive behavior, she writes, “We have to always find the blessing, to be the blessing.”
Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9780063304413
Page Count: 288
Publisher: HarperOne
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
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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BOOK REVIEW
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