Science & Nature Dawn Light: Dancing with Cranes and Other Ways to Start the Day By Diane Ackerman WW Norton and Co., $24.95, 240 pages Diane Ackerman’s essays take your breath away. They make you stop everything and sit in wonder. With simple assessable poetic prose she observes and gives voice to natural wonders…like snails, dew, sunrise, cattails, cranes in flight. The book’s personal meditations average 1500 words each (about 5 small nicely spaced pages) and they are arranged according to the seasons, about 10 or 15 essays for each. The book is so rich that I took it in a little at a time, reading an essay every day or so, savoring the images and insights. After reading, I usually felt prompted to get outside and look around, to pay finer attention to what happens moment by moment outdoors in my own neighborhood, parking lot, or garden. Ackerman’s most compelling quality is that of focused attention. With this focus she examines nature up close (bees in hives, moss on trees) and from this peering in nature’s window she finds perspective about life’s intimate truths. In a lovely piece describing a spider spinning her web, we learn about spiders in general and in particular, spiders that went on space missions, and how spider web spinning changes when weavers are given various drugs. Then a sweet commentary on how the web of the young spider shows the energetic excess of youth in extra layers of webbing. More mature spiders, we learn, spin better webs with fewer strands, using their energy more efficiently. “Dawn Light” is not just poetry and inspiration; it is also full of interesting facts astronomical, nautical, civil and biological. And passion: earth loving, sky scraping, life hugging, and wisdom seeking, celebratory passion. Reviewed by Marcia Jo Whole Earth Discipline By Stewart Brand Viking Adult, $25.95, 325 pages While many make a lot of noise about the green movement, Stewart Brand makes a bold statement that simply cannot be ignored. His discussion about the world’s carrying capacity is disturbingly fascinating and right on target. He points to a rather scary scenario for various systems reaching their capacity threshold and changing forever, and forever changing the landscape on earth. He sees millions of
species lost, and large landlocked ice shelves sliding into the ocean, increasing water levels by 16 feet or more. Stewart Brand has orchestrated a diverse approach to understand the environmental predicament we find ourselves in. He accomplishes this with a unique and resourceful embodiment of knowledge reaching out to a distinguished group of thinkers who have established authority in their own realm. Together, Brand points the way to understanding. We must become benevolent ecosystem engineers. We must be like earthworms, terra forming the planet for its future sustainability. We must be like the birds and the bees, pollinating the earth for prosperity. His work is a breath of fresh air. If we are to enjoy that air in future generations, we better wake up and see what we have done and find ways to fix it. Reviewed by D. Wayne Dworsky The Medicine Cabinet of Curiosities: An Unconventional Compendium of Health Facts and Oddities from Asthmatic Mice to Plants That Can Kill By Nicholas Bakalar Henry Holt, $15.00, 225 pages Well, this is fun: here’s a book for anyone with an inquisitive mind about all things medical or, alternatively, a burning desire to ace a category on a Jeopardy quiz show. Bakalar covers everything from murder sprees by doctors to why sweat stinks to downright delectable descriptions of Ebola disease and Lassa fever. For an “addictive collection of trivia,” as the publisher describes it, the book is extremely well-researched and accurate, with rare exceptions (at one point he states: “creatinine levels indicate whether your electrolytes are in balance.” Close, but not exactly). This is all aimed at the general reader, and the explanations are blessedly clear, even on such esoteric topics as knockout mice and glycogen storage diseases. The style ranges from pretty damned clever to mildly corny, but overall this is an enjoyable browser book: it can be read cover to cover in a short time, but it’s probably best to take the author’s advice and just “flip from page to page at random.” Or better yet, check out the index and pick your poison (and yes, there’s a section on that as well). Reviewed by James Vasser, MD
Green Metropolis
By David Owen Riverhead Hardcover, $25.95, 368 pages Green Metropolis is well written, thoughtfully researched, and passionately argued. It is also obscenely pretentious, patronizing, and a supreme example of pointy-headed thinkers taking their idealist precepts to intrusive and kooky levels. Mr. Owen’s thesis is this: big cities, instead of being the hell-holes of pollution and environmental apocalypse that we all assume them to be, are actually less of a strain on the environment than we’ve been led to believe. According to Mr. Owen, residents of cities like New York City – and, in particular, Manhattan – use less energy, throw away less trash, and drive much less (if at all) compared to their wasteful, commuting, SUV-driving, water-consuming-yard owning, great-big-house buying relatives in the suburbs. So, according to Mr. Owen, we should strive to become more like Manhattan – less suburban and much, much more urban. Sounds eminently reasonable, doesn’t it? Not a bad idea at all, right? That is, until you start getting into the nitty gritty of Mr. Owen’s arguments. For instance, try this quote on for size: “A sensitive person’s first reaction to the mounting evidence that Americans, especially young Americans, may be losing interest in directly experiencing the natural world is likely to be one of regret and loss, or even despair. But is it necessarily a bad thing, globally speaking? It seems perverse to say so, but sitting indoors playing video games is easier on the environment than any number of (formerly) popular outdoor recreational activities…In the end, it may not be a bad thing for the earth or for the human race if increasing numbers of Americans would rather watch our shrunken wilderness on TV than fly to it in an airplane and drive across it on a motorbike.” If this were satire, it would be hilariously funny. But it isn’t. Mr. Owen’s solution to the waste and degradation of natural resources is to “live closer”: screw backyards and camping and rural living. We don’t need that stuff. Kids just want to stay in and play video games anyway. What about our rapacious use of oil and other energy sources? Easy – live in smaller houses, closer together. In other words, forget your selfish ideal of living in a house in a pleasant rural area with more than 1.34 children and room to grow. You’re killing the world as we know it if you even consider it. Mr. Owen’s arguments are interesting and appealing, but only in a world populated by individuals who are perfectly willing to let someone else decide where and how we should live, how many children we should have, and how and what we should eat. The overwhelming majority of Americans bucks against this sort of highhandedness, and thank goodness for that. The concepts he puts forward are definitely worth considering – it’s his solutions that are problematic. America has always been about the search and discovery of more solutions, not fewer. Let’s hope that Mr. Owen’s dream of a greener America doesn’t end up being constrained by this horrendous vision of one big, brave, urban new world. Reviewed by Michelle Kerns
FIVE, con’t from page 5 David Bosco gives the reader the story of the Security Council from the point of view of the Big Five--How the relations of the Big Five affected how the Council worked, from the early days, through the height of the Cold War to the fall of Soviet Russia and the rise of transnational threats. Bosco uses a United States-British point of view of the Council, briefly bringing in the other voices. He admits this at the end--that drawbacks include a combination of lack of archival access and a language barrier. While the book is good for students early on in their
education or a reader wanting to know more, there is a lack of discussion about how the Security Council interacted with other bodies in the UN besides the General Assembly and how formal treaties came to be, with or without approval from the Big Five. Reviewed by Kevin Winter
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