Despite the absence of a primer on whale language, readers will savor this expert exploration of animal communication.
The science behind animal communication, with an emphasis on whales.
Mustill, a biologist and filmmaker who has collaborated with Greta Thunberg and David Attenborough, among others, opens with a bracing scene: In 2015, while kayaking with a friend in Monterey Bay, off the California coast, a breaching whale “punched the kayak beneath the water,” nearly drowning him and his friend. Filmed by neighboring whale watchers, the video went viral and stimulated the author’s already intense interest in these immense mammals. He writes that the plight of whales first attracted popular attention during the Cold War, when U.S. Navy hydrophones placed on the sea floor to eavesdrop on Soviet submarines detected strange musical sounds from passing whales. The 1970 album Songs of the Humpback Whale became a blockbuster environmental milestone and marked the beginning of the end of widespread commercial whaling. So what are the whales saying? No one denies that animals exchange signals, but discussing the concept of “animal language” with some scientists was like “waving a red cape in front of a bull.” Though no specific “words” are revealed, Mustill uncovers numerous intriguing avenues as he recounts his travels around the world interviewing the growing number of scientists trying to make sense of an overwhelming stream of recordings from cetaceans (whales and closely related dolphins and porpoises), with contributions from other chatty animals, especially birds. After the 1950s, oscilloscopes produced permanent pictures, but it was only in the past decade that big data and artificial intelligence enabled researchers to identify individual whales, each with an individual speech pattern, and follow them across the globe. They learned that cetaceans live long lives in complex societies, with clans and cultures delineated by the way they speak, a fascinating world brought to life by Mustill.
Despite the absence of a primer on whale language, readers will savor this expert exploration of animal communication.Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5387-3911-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2022
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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