by Roberto Trotta ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 7, 2023
A largely satisfying miscellany about stars.
Looking for an original focus among the many books describing the universe, a theoretical physicist looks to the stars.
“Stars and planets spurred the invention of mathematics; the Moon, that of the calendar,” writes Trotta, author of The Edge of the Sky. “And could it be that paying attention to the heavens was the secret weapon that gave Homo sapiens supremacy over the Neanderthals fifty thousand years ago?” For millennia, the movements of the constellations, the five “wandering stars” (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn), the Moon, the Sun, and occasional comets and meteors have held deep significance. They have governed clocks, calendars, seasons, planting, harvests, and holidays and have been the basis of myth and religion. While minor gods inhabited forests and caves, the big ones lived in the sky. All cultures have wondered at the stars. Trotta passes quickly over the big bang and follows no strict chronology, but he pauses regularly to recount events in a fictional culture on a planet where clouds permanently hide the sky. The result is a scattershot collection of chapters describing milestones in the study of stars, from the origin of calendars lost in prehistory to the mysteries of dark energy in this century. Astronomy buffs will find few pearls, but most readers will enjoy expert accounts of clocks throughout history; Newton’s spectacular work; the history of navigation (still entirely dependent on the stars); telescopes, from Galileo’s in 1611 to last year’s James Webb; the dazzling 19th-century discoveries of the enormous quantities and distances of stars; the dawn of computers; and the amazing appeal of astrology. In a grim conclusion, Trotta warns that the stars have long since disappeared from our light-poisoned cities and are imperiled everywhere, as we fill the air with pollution and Earth’s vicinity with space junk, spending billions on sending humans into orbit while billions suffer on Earth.
A largely satisfying miscellany about stars.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9781541674776
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
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by Amy Tan ; illustrated by Amy Tan ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 23, 2024
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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by Amy Tan
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by Amy Tan
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IndieBound Bestseller
by Steve Martin illustrated by Harry Bliss ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 17, 2020
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
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IndieBound Bestseller
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
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by Steve Martin ; illustrated by Harry Bliss
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by Steve Martin & illustrated by C.F. Payne
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