Insightful and arresting, this book offers an achievable road map to a more “radiant future.”
A renowned scientist delivers a simple yet urgent call to action on behalf of Earth’s multitude of plants: Use us to save humanity.
As leading plant neurobiologist Mancuso writes, “plants are what make Earth the planet we know. Without them, our planet would very much resemble the images we have of Mars or Venus: a sterile ball of rock.” Sadly, the author demonstrates how humans have inflicted unimaginable damage on all varieties of plants during the short time we have controlled Earth. From deforestation to underestimating the fullness of plant life, humans “behave like children who wreak havoc” because of their “total incomprehension of the rules that govern the existence of a community of living beings.” In this slim but powerful book, which advances similar arguments as The Incredible Journey of Plants and The Revolutionary Genius of Plants, Mancuso responds to this threat by imagining a constitution written by plants, complete with specific articles to serve as the pillars on which plant life rests. Despite the author’s sometimes tongue-in-cheek writing style, which most readers will find refreshing and pleasant, the subject matter is dead serious. Each article of the constitution builds on the idea that plants have brilliantly evolved to thrive through symbiosis with other ecosystems, as opposed to the human tendency to lay waste to them. Mancuso concludes his elegant and cogent argument with straightforward advice accessible to anyone: “There should be just one simple rule: wherever it is possible for a plant to live, there must be one. Unlike many of the alternative proposals, this measure would require only negligible costs, would improve people’s lives in myriad ways, would not demand any revolution in our habits, and would have a great impact on the absorption of carbon dioxide. Let’s defend our forests and cover our cities with plants. The rest will not take long to follow.”
Insightful and arresting, this book offers an achievable road map to a more “radiant future.”Pub Date: March 23, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-63542-099-9
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Other Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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