Though with some overlap with the existing literature, a useful survey of the current state of all matters lupine.
Blending solid history with on-the-ground reportage, natural history writer Peterson (Wolf Haven: Sanctuary and the Future of Wolves in North America, 2016, etc.) turns in a spirited defense of Canis lupus.
The war on wolves is an ancient one. In the American West, where the author lives, ranchers fear wolves for their supposedly ravenous, profit-reducing hunger; elsewhere, wolves have been made into fairy-tale monsters. Against such clichés, Peterson serves up a few of her own, including the old saw about superior Native American wisdom in asking, “who speaks for wolf?” and the rather obvious nostrum, “to declare a person or an animal an enemy requires dehumanizing the other.” Much of the spiritual ground, so to speak, that she covers has already been explored in better books by Barry Lopez and Peter Matthiessen, while Thomas McNamee and Rick McIntyre (who makes an appearance here) have done more comprehensive work in studying the fate of the wolf population of Yellowstone National Park. Yet, while she does not surpass them, Peterson adds important information, including her account of the recently articulated mechanisms of “trophic cascades,” by which wolves are seen to have large implications for the health of wild ecosystems. “We are just beginning to understand wolf biology,” she writes before examining some of those implications as they center on the fate of one fallen wolf. Often, Peterson’s passing observations are as useful as the data she presents on wolves themselves. For instance, she notes, hopefully, that the millennial generation, though not identifying as “environmentalists” strictly speaking, are “the most environmental generation ever,” supporting clean energy, strong regulatory programs, wilderness protection, and, yes, wolf reintroduction. There are other good takeaways here as well, including a lively discussion of why wolves howl and what kind of “vocabularies” they employ when doing so.
Though with some overlap with the existing literature, a useful survey of the current state of all matters lupine.Pub Date: May 2, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-306-82493-7
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Da Capo
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2017
A quirky wonder of a book.
A Peabody Award–winning NPR science reporter chronicles the life of a turn-of-the-century scientist and how her quest led to significant revelations about the meaning of order, chaos, and her own existence.
Miller began doing research on David Starr Jordan (1851-1931) to understand how he had managed to carry on after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroyed his work. A taxonomist who is credited with discovering “a full fifth of fish known to man in his day,” Jordan had amassed an unparalleled collection of ichthyological specimens. Gathering up all the fish he could save, Jordan sewed the nameplates that had been on the destroyed jars directly onto the fish. His perseverance intrigued the author, who also discusses the struggles she underwent after her affair with a woman ended a heterosexual relationship. Born into an upstate New York farm family, Jordan attended Cornell and then became an itinerant scholar and field researcher until he landed at Indiana University, where his first ichthyological collection was destroyed by lightning. In between this catastrophe and others involving family members’ deaths, he reconstructed his collection. Later, he was appointed as the founding president of Stanford, where he evolved into a Machiavellian figure who trampled on colleagues and sang the praises of eugenics. Miller concludes that Jordan displayed the characteristics of someone who relied on “positive illusions” to rebound from disaster and that his stand on eugenics came from a belief in “a divine hierarchy from bacteria to humans that point[ed]…toward better.” Considering recent research that negates biological hierarchies, the author then suggests that Jordan’s beloved taxonomic category—fish—does not exist. Part biography, part science report, and part meditation on how the chaos that caused Miller’s existential misery could also bring self-acceptance and a loving wife, this unique book is an ingenious celebration of diversity and the mysterious order that underlies all existence.
A quirky wonder of a book.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6027-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
Unsentimental nature writing that sheds as much light on humans as on eels.
An account of the mysterious life of eels that also serves as a meditation on consciousness, faith, time, light and darkness, and life and death.
In addition to an intriguing natural history, Swedish journalist Svensson includes a highly personal account of his relationship with his father. The author alternates eel-focused chapters with those about his father, a man obsessed with fishing for this elusive creature. “I can’t recall us ever talking about anything other than eels and how to best catch them, down there by the stream,” he writes. “I can’t remember us speaking at all….Because we were in…a place whose nature was best enjoyed in silence.” Throughout, Svensson, whose beat is not biology but art and culture, fills his account with people: Aristotle, who thought eels emerged live from mud, “like a slithering, enigmatic miracle”; Freud, who as a teenage biologist spent months in Trieste, Italy, peering through a microscope searching vainly for eel testes; Johannes Schmidt, who for two decades tracked thousands of eels, looking for their breeding grounds. After recounting the details of the eel life cycle, the author turns to the eel in literature—e.g., in the Bible, Rachel Carson’s Under the Sea Wind, and Günter Grass’ The Tin Drum—and history. He notes that the Puritans would likely not have survived without eels, and he explores Sweden’s “eel coast” (what it once was and how it has changed), how eel fishing became embroiled in the Northern Irish conflict, and the importance of eel fishing to the Basque separatist movement. The apparent return to life of a dead eel leads Svensson to a consideration of faith and the inherent message of miracles. He warns that if we are to save this fascinating creature from extinction, we must continue to study it. His book is a highly readable place to begin learning.
Unsentimental nature writing that sheds as much light on humans as on eels.Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-296881-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
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