A basic scientific concept receives long overdue attention.
Rotary motion may seem uninteresting, but it turns out to be worth understanding.
Ennos, a professor of biological sciences and author of The Age of Wood, points out that Isaac Newton derived his laws from studying rotary motion via planetary orbits. With some modification, circular movements obey his laws, but few scientists took note because 17th-century life and technology didn’t feature much spin. As both grew more complex during the following centuries, scientists struggled to explain rotational forces, making a surprising number of mistakes (which Ennos happily points out). Beginning with the Big Bang, the author emphasizes that curved motion plus gravity formed the stars and planets, “so spin really did create both the heavens and the earth.” Traditionally, the invention of the wheel is considered the key landmark in the rise of civilization, although Ennos considers it overrated as a method of transportation until a much more recent development: roads. Regarding chariots, the author writes that “they would certainly have enabled wealthy aristocrats to be taken to the heart of battles without getting out of breath, but they would only have been practical on smooth, level battlefields, and so only suitable for stylized set combats.” Though wheeled vehicles have proven disappointing over the centuries, the principle of a circular disk whirling around a fixed axle has been vital to nearly all human machinery since the Bronze Age. By the 19th century, it had transformed the textile and metalworking industries and revolutionized transport, starting the process of globalization that continues to this day. Ennos divides the text into topical sections: spin related to the universe, to machines, and to the human body. Although generous with charts and pictures, inevitably, most of his explanations require words, and readers with no scientific background may struggle to understand his written descriptions of high- and low-pressure turbines or how humans keep their balance. Nonetheless, there’s plenty to ponder.
A basic scientific concept receives long overdue attention.Pub Date: July 18, 2023
ISBN: 9781982196523
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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BOOK TO SCREEN
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