PositiveThe San Francisco ChronicleLelyveld won the Pulitzer Prize 30 years ago...His Final Battle will not repeat that feat, though it is a tale well-told ... The book carries an impending sense of doom. FDR’s last time in the White House, and his final visit to his home in Hyde Park, N.Y., are chronicled with a drama that they surely lacked at the time.
Edward O. Wilson
MixedThe San Francisco ChronicleHalf-Earth is one-quarter celebration and three-quarters lamentation — a celebration of the Earth’s extraordinary biodiversity, and lamentation of the assault (a word he uses repeatedly) that humanity has mounted against it ... Refreshingly, Wilson does not dwell on climate change as the sole culprit. Fragmentation of land, pollution of the water and air, the introduction of invasive species — all are destructive, with or without atmospheric warming. He plunges boldly into the politically charged waters of population growth ... Wilson’s aspiration, however noble, is that of a retired Harvard professor who has the time and money to ponder ants and dragonflies and grasslands.
