A charming narrative for avid birders and armchair nature lovers, sure to inspire at least a few flights of fancy.
One of the world’s foremost birders reflects on his life in nature, which has always “kept me young through a sense of wonder.”
Emanuel has spent his entire life observing birds, beginning with his childhood in Houston, when, “like some boys, I was interested in just about anything that was alive—birds, butterflies, crayfish, snakes, turtles, fish.” Since then, the author has traveled to every continent and chronicled more than 6,000 species of birds, and his birding tour company, Victor Emanuel Nature Tours, which he founded in 1976, is held in high regard within the ecotourism world. In his memoir, the author reminisces about his countless experiences with birds and the opportunities that have blossomed around that interest. Emanuel caught the nature bug early and particularly enjoyed the many wonderful winged creatures he encountered around his hometown. By the time he was 10, he had participated in his first Audubon Christmas Bird Count. His lifelong passion has led to deeply satisfying relationships with other birders including Roger Tory Peterson, George Plimpton, Peter Matthiessen, and Laura Bush. In 1985, after a few of his colleagues left VENT to start their own company, Emanuel came to a realization about what he wanted to do next. “I wanted to create an educational adventure for youngsters,” writes the author, “so they could learn to identify birds, understand their life zones, and appreciate the environmental role that birds play in nature….I found solace in this new endeavor because it was focused on serving the next generation of birders.” Whether he is recounting his experiences with raptors in Turkey, rose-ringed parakeets in India, or black-and-white owls in Panama, Emanuel’s love of the natural world is always on display.
A charming narrative for avid birders and armchair nature lovers, sure to inspire at least a few flights of fancy.Pub Date: May 9, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4773-1238-4
Page Count: 296
Publisher: Univ. of Texas
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2017
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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