An imaginative, sensible education for those concerned with the fate of the Earth.
A stimulating exploration into how the laws of biology can help us “understand the future into which we are—arms flailing, coal burning, and full speed ahead—hurling ourselves.”
Describing the havoc humans are wreaking on the planet is a fertile subject, but this challenging book focuses on what we think we know about nature but don’t. Dunn, a professor of applied ecology, notes that life is far vaster and unexplored than we imagine and that our default approach to nature seems to be an attempt to hold it back. He adds that those who study nature learn by studying isolated systems such as islands, where ecologists learn how species arrive, evolve, prosper, and go extinct. Recently, they have turned their attention to human-made habitats. The largest are farms and cities. Just as new species appear on islands, the same is true in human ecosystems. Rats, mice, pigeons, and weeds are evolving, and eventually each city will have its own species adapted to the local surroundings. Mostly, they eat, uninvited, from our plates, but humans still prefer these habitats. Today, the entire world is becoming a human ecosystem: Wild animals make up just 3% of the vertebrate biomass; domestic animals make up 65%, and the rest are humans. While cutting down forests and paving swamps, humans also began warming the world, which is good for diseases and parasites. In the near future, thanks to our profligate ways, Earth will be more pleasant for insects and microorganisms and less so for humans. “We can find ways to survive…just not forever,” Dunn warns. “Eventually we will go extinct. All species do.” Dealing reasonably with the circumstances requires knowledge and imagination. The author avoids the usual implausible how-to-fix-it conclusion: worldwide cooperation, self-denial, scientific breakthroughs, unpopular (and therefore unlikely) government actions. Instead, he offers a book that is less doomsday prophecy and more excellent primer on ecology and evolution.
An imaginative, sensible education for those concerned with the fate of the Earth.Pub Date: Nov. 9, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5416-1930-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2021
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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