PositiveLibrary JournalWith the exception of \'heroes of the bog\'—sphagnum mosses—she does not write extensively about wetlands’ flora and fauna. Rather, her focus is on human relationships with wetlands, including a fascinating account of northern Europe’s Iron-age bog bodies. Her eye for folly is sharply trained on the long record of ruinous drainage \'projects.\' But while there are many occasions for eco-grief in the book, there are also glimmers of hope: e.g., in the scientists who laid the groundwork to the understanding of these ecosystems and the many restoration projects underway ... Fans of Proulx’s fiction, even those with marginal interest in peatlands, will be intrigued by the snippets of memoir and the habits of a writer’s mind that this collection reveals.
George Monbiot
RaveLibrary Journal... intriguing ... Monbiot has impressive evidence to support his \'more food, less farming\' message, and his articulate outrage at agriculturally caused ecological degradation is bracing. His book also reports from the field, visiting farmers and a food bank administrator to discover innovative farm practices and to learn how the food system impacts people in need ... Provocateur Monbiot’s \'new restoration story about food\' is sure to generate interest, both approving and dismissive.
Porter Fox
RaveLibrary Journal... gripping ... The picture that emerges is terrifying, as Fox eloquently describes the significant impacts of melting ice sheets and more frequent wildfires ... Fox has written an important, much-needed book about the climate crisis that injects a personal element into an abstract-seeming problem. This is popular science at its best.
Bill Schutt
PositiveLibrary JournalSchutt turns his wry lens on the heart and circulatory system in this entertaining read ... Schutt covers a lot of ground here and discusses serious science, but his witty style keeps it readable ... An engaging, often droll look at the engine of life and the long history of efforts to understand it.
Cal Flyn
RaveLibrary Journal... strangely beautiful ... Though the tension is palpable, Flyn’s narrative voice remains calm, even as she ignores prohibitory signs, crawls under barbed wire, sloshes around in toxic muck, or spelunks in abandoned structures. Visiting places where nature is flourishing in our absence, she captures searing images of both waste and regeneration. Flyn presents a balanced approach to her subject; she carefully avoids venturing too far into disaster tourism and instead considers the psychological and sociological implications of urban decay. She concludes by stressing the redemptive possibilities of feral ecosystems and noting the ongoing impact of climate change on these locations ... With this absorbing mix of ecology, social history, and travel (even if for most readers, it’ll be of the armchair sort), Flyn offers a hopeful way of seeing often-overlooked landscapes.
Suzanne Simard
RaveLibrary JournalSimard celebrates pivotal moments, navigates personal crises, and admits to professional doubts; all told in a smoothly written narrative. The risks and rigors of her field work—conducting experiments with radioactive materials, navigating salmon runs while being aware of wild animals within and around the forest—are keenly felt, as are the challenges facing a reticent woman working for change in the way we manage forests ... Simard’s science fascinates, and so too does her life. This is an engaging memoir of scientific discovery.
Jonathan Meiburg
RaveLibrary Journal... the author blends natural history, scientific inquiry, and travelogue in an attempt to better understand the species, including its past and future. Readers follow Meiburg as he stalks Johnny rook relatives in the jungles of Guyana and the Andes mountain range; he also travels to English falconry parks to see captive birds show off their brainy side. A fascinating subtheme concerns Victorian naturalist and novelist W. H. Hudson, who is now largely forgotten; he was one of the first to write appreciatively about caracaras ... An ambitious, impressive debut. The book’s manifold strands will engage all sorts of readers, including bird lovers, science buffs, and eco-adventure fans.
Dan Richards, Stanley Donwood, Robert Macfarlane
PositiveLibrary JournalThe authors’ voices meld wonderfully, and readers may come to feel that \'paths run through people as surely as they run through places\' ... Complete with instructions for reading, this book showcases some of Macfarlane’s most genre-defying work.
Peter Godfrey-Smith
RaveLibrary JournalThis is no dry, academic treatise; Godfrey-Smith takes care to keep the work accessible by summarizing key points, explaining the work of relevant scientists and philosophers, and punctuating the text with memorable facts. The book is enlivened by the wit and affection with which the author often regards his subjects of study ... An astonishing range of creatures are considered and a fascinating argument advanced about how evolutionary innovations can give rise to animal minds ... This is popular science writing at its best, offering uncanny reach to a swath of readers with varying degrees of interest in evolutionary biology and philosophy of mind.
Edward D. Melillo
PositiveLibrary JournalMelillo introduces many little-known facts and moments of insight, making this an engaging and often surprising read for those interested in environmental history.
Ben Ehrenreich
RaveLibrary JournalRichly evocative, this is a book that begs to be reread, both for its biting social commentary and its wholly original contribution to the literature of planetary catastrophe.
David Farrier
RaveLibrary JournalBlending science, literature, and art, this work leads readers to imagine time, backward and forward; writing in a remarkably fluid style, Farrier is as adept at retelling ancient myth as he is at explaining little-known science ... A compelling thought experiment that is sometimes unsettling in its findings but always cleverly conceived and beautifully expressed.
John Taliaferro
RaveLibrary JournalTaliaferro masterfully attends to the long, busy arc of his subject\'s life, scouring some 40,000 pages of Grinnell\'s letters, numerous diaries, and travelogs, years of Forest and Stream articles, plus his monographs to create a satisfying portrait. The reader\'s reward is a sense of nature, native culture, and landscapes as viewed through an observant explorer\'s eyes, at the moment when Westward expansion was irrevocably changing it ... This richly detailed biography will engage students of environmental history and general readers alike.
