A gorgeous, authoritative, and philosophical directive to stop destroying the mutualisms of life.
Humans and nature, working together.
Mutualisms are beneficial relationships between two or more species. Humans depend on countless numbers of these—and discover more of them—every day, says Dunn, author of several books. Once, we did not “see” mutualisms, perhaps guided too much by competitive aspects of Darwinism. But Darwin saw cooperation, or “mutualistic symbioses,” in evolution, too. And so did other scientists after researcher Lynn Margulis, in the 1960s, discovered that the mitochondria in all our cells were born when one single-celled bacterium “ate” another billions of years ago and began using it as its energy source: the first complex life. We now know that we are a compilation of endless life forms that live in and around us, that sustain us as we sustain them. Margulis “reimagine[d] symbiotic partnerships as the default story of life.” This book is teeming with such partnerships. One of the most compelling: the partnership between ancient trees and savanna-hopping ancient humans. The trees used the humans to spread their seeds (“fruits evolved to attract animals to eat them”) even as humans used the fruit to survive. (Trees are, in fact, among “nature’s chefs,” the author has unearthed in his research.) Then there is human-beaver mutualism. Near the author’s home in North Carolina, engineers looking to revive a stream removed concrete over it. But because they also straightened it, the waters couldn’t slow, as they do when bending, to pool and form ecosystems. For 17 years the author saw little wildlife. Then two beavers—as they have for 12 million years—built a lodge for themselves, damming and pooling the stream. Soon, life was everywhere: fish, birds, mammals, turtles. A once-stagnant urban trickle had become a “new and righteous, riotous place.”
A gorgeous, authoritative, and philosophical directive to stop destroying the mutualisms of life.Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2025
ISBN: 9781541605732
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: today
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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