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NonfictionNatureAnimals

Take a bird’s-eye view of Earth Day

Feature by Anna Christensen

This period of cloistering at home has made bird lovers everywhere more attentive to their backyards. Millions of us have hung bird feeders, ordered bird identification cards and glued ourselves to the windowpane to watch these tiny emissaries of the sky. Yet for all the joy that birds bring us, they face grim and unprecedented dangers as their numbers dwindle. To better appreciate the beauty, delicacy and tenacity of our aerial friends, these books will put you on the right crosswind.

★ A World on the Wing

Scott Weidensaul, a Pulitzer finalist for his book Living on the Wind: Across the Hemisphere With Migratory Birds, returns to the topic in A World on the Wing: The Global Odyssey of Migratory Birds, though much has changed in the intervening 20 years. For one thing, tracking technology has improved, with devices shrunk to a size that even the smallest songbirds can wear. Weidensaul describes a minuscule transmitter fitted to the small of a bird’s back by two small loops around its legs, and this is charming to think about—first, of birds having a small of the back, and second, of their wearing transmitters like tiny underpants.

In 2016 the Anthropocene Working Group proposed that humanity had left the Holocene and entered the Anthropocene, an era defined by the ways humans have destabilized the natural world. Weidensaul addresses migratory birds’ changing reality and the scientists who work tirelessly to learn more about them and advocate on their behalf to the powers responsible for decimating these birds’ lives and rhythms. The plight and toughness of both birds and their human defenders will move you in lasting ways.

★ A Most Remarkable Creature

According to Jonathan Meiburg, a South American falcon called the caracara is both the most and least likely animal to survive the world to come. Personable and wickedly clever, the caracara’s greatest strengths are its adaptability, intelligence and ability to forge connections, even with humans. In his debut book, A Most Remarkable Creature: The Hidden Life and Epic Journey of the World’s Smartest Birds of Prey, Meiburg travels across South America in pursuit of this little-known falcon that seems to either enchant or chagrin anyone who crosses its path.

So intimately does Meiburg acquaint his readers with this inquisitive, curious, sometimes playful thief of a bird that it’s startling when he adds “doomed” to that list of adjectives. Meiburg’s fondness for the caracara is plain, and he can’t help but dream up a plan to rescue this odd winged creature from its steadily shrinking habitat, encroached upon by forces both natural and human-made. What’s more, Meiburg lodges the caracara so deeply in readers’ hearts that by the end of the book, they will feel ready to participate in whatever scheme he proposes to save this peculiar dinosaur-descendant.

The Glitter in the Green

At the other end of the avian spectrum lies the hummingbird, that glamorous, sugar-high pugilist of the garden. Natural history writer, photographer and hummingbird obsessive (within the first hundred pages he crosses both a bear and a puma in pursuit of this tiny, glimmering bird) Jon Dunn has written a book that is both an ode to hummingbirds and a remarkable piece of travel literature. In The Glitter in the Green: In Search of Hummingbirds, we travel with Dunn to Alaska, Mexico and across South America as he follows in the hummingbird’s wake.

Dunn gives us the facts about hummingbirds—for example, their long tongues coil inside their skulls when not in use and split at the end to allow for rapid-fire nectar gathering—but he also explores the places where hummingbirds intersect with the world they inhabit and the people they affect. The story of hummingbirds intertwines intriguingly with Mexican witchcraft, James Bond, plane crashes, economies around the world and the lingering legacy of Aztec power. We come to realize that these familiar visitors are astonishingly mysterious: They perform impressive migrations to arctic climes for breeding, their feathers have been valued as currency, and some cultures believe they bring love and guard travelers. From the narrative of Dunn’s excursion, we learn that a backyard hummingbird sighting is actually an exotic visit from the wide, strange world.

To better appreciate the beauty, delicacy and tenacity of our aerial friends, these books will put you on the right crosswind.
NonfictionWomen's HistoryNatureAmerican History

Book Clubs: September 2021

Feature by Julie Hale

These four provocative nonfiction books offer fresh perspectives on our nation.

A first-rate collection of essays gathered from Southern Living and Garden & Gun magazines, Where I Come From: Stories From the Deep South by beloved memoirist Rick Bragg provides unique insights into the author’s corner of America. In these brief but powerful pieces, Bragg’s curiosity ranges far and wide as he reflects upon personal interests (pickup trucks, Southern cuisine, country music) and more universal matters (race and religion). Offering a kaleidoscopic look at the contemporary South, this colorful compilation is sure to inspire rousing discussions. 

David Gessner takes readers on an unforgettable tour of the nation’s monuments and parks in Leave It As It Is: A Journey Through Theodore Roosevelt’s American Wilderness. Gessner gives an overview of the life and conservation work of Theodore Roosevelt and also shows how that work remains significant today as he visits Yellowstone National Park, the Grand Canyon and other sites. Subjects such as environmentalism and the future of public lands will get book clubs talking, and Gessner’s humor and incisive observations make him a wonderful traveling companion.

In Looking for Miss America: A Pageant’s 100-Year Quest to Define Womanhood, Margot Mifflin delivers a fascinating historical survey of the Miss America pageant. Using the contest as a gauge of the advancement of women in America, Mifflin traces its evolution from a tourist attraction in Atlantic City in 1921 to a scholarship contest 100 years later. Her brisk, spirited narrative will entertain readers even as it presents fruitful material for discussion, with topics as wide-ranging as the #MeToo movement and the role of pageants in society.

Ojibwe author David Treuer gives a fresh account of Native American history in The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present. Blending history and reportage with personal narrative, Treuer sets out to show that, contrary to the story told in books such as Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Indigenous culture was not destroyed in the late 19th century. Rather, it is still alive and vibrant today. Authoritative yet accessible, his book is rich in talking points, including contemporary depictions of Native Americans in popular culture and the impact of the American Indian Movement.

These four provocative nonfiction books offer fresh perspectives on our nation.

NonfictionSocial ScienceNature

Lifestyles: September 2021

Feature by Susannah Felts

The books in this month’s lifestyles column will deepen your understanding of the world and broaden your compassion for the humans you share it with. 

★ How to Suffer Outside

“If you can walk, put stuff in a bag, and remember to eat, you can backpack,” declares Diana Helmuth in the perfectly titled How to Suffer Outside: A Beginner’s Guide to Hiking and Backpacking. I’m not entirely sure I buy this statement, but that didn’t stop me from enjoying the heck out of Helmuth’s funny, frank writing. Her perspective is a breath of fresh air on the whole fresh-air-and-nature thing. While she claims to be no expert backpacker herself, she drops all kinds of useful, earned wisdom in these pages, spinning tales from her own hiking adventures along the way. A random sample: “One of the saddest things about backpacking is that no matter how clean the water looks, you probably can’t drink it. Even deep in the wilderness, tiny dregs of civilization are there to ruin your good time.” Were I a bookseller, I would press this book on customers regardless of their interest in backpacking. I would recommend it for the voice and storytelling: Here, stay inside if you want. Turn off Netflix, and read this.

Demystifying Disability

The disabled community is vast and diverse, and society is due for a paradigm shift in thinking and talking about its members. With Demystifying Disability: What to Know, What to Say, and How to Be an Ally, activist and writer Emily Ladau is a responsible guide and advocate for change, and her book is one that everyone could benefit from reading. Ladau recognizes that just as there are multitudes of disabilities, there is room for all of us to learn more about disabled people’s varied experiences and make our world more inclusive and accessible. Changes in vocabulary—like opting for disabled instead of euphemistic words like handi-capable (a particular peeve of Ladau’s), or avoiding words like lame and idiot as common pejoratives—help shift mindsets one word at a time. Changes in media norms are necessary as well. Landau explains how feel-good stories about disabled people “overcoming” their disabilities actually reinforce the bias toward able-bodied people. Right now, ableist beliefs and behaviors still fly under the radar, and Ladau’s careful treatment of this subject is a corrective that can help us all be better humans.

Forget Prayers, Bring Cake

While the title is pleasingly cheeky, Forget Prayers, Bring Cake: A Single Woman’s Guide to Grieving never loses sight of the fact that there’s nothing funny about the death of a loved one. Grieving is always difficult, but it can be immeasurably more painful if you’re a single woman, argues Merissa Nathan Gerson—on top of all the ways our culture is ill-suited, period, for allowing us the time and space and voice that grief demands. After learning that in other cultures there’s an individual known as a moirologist—“a non-married woman hired . . . to strike the earth, tear at her hair, scream and wail and provoke others to grieve for the dead”—Gerson offers herself, with this book, as a compassionate, experienced voice for those who have suffered a loss. Her advice and personal stories offer solace and insight for any mourner but are shared with a keen eye toward the unique experience of losing a loved one when you are young and single. 

The books in this month’s lifestyles column will deepen your understanding of the world and broaden your compassion for the humans you share it with.
NonfictionMystery & SuspenseFictionTravelSportsShort StoriesPoetryNatureEssays

Surveying the best of the best in 2000

Review by Joanna Brichetto

Readers in search of the best new writing in America need not search far. Trustworthy editors have scrutinized a year's worth of publications in nearly every field to cull the finest short stories, sports writing, mystery stories, essays, travel writing and poetry for new anthologies. Each collection may be enjoyed as a satisfying end in itself or as a convenient introduction to new or unfamiliar writers.

Grand Master Donald E. Westlake has assembled a fine collection in The Best American Mystery Stories 2000. Offerings range from Shel Silverstein's nimble "The Guilty Party" to Robert Girardi's gritty shocker "The Defenestration of Aba Sid." As in the other categories of Houghton Mifflin's Best American Writing Series, the editors provide a kind of runner-up list of distinguished stories (with sources) for interested readers to track down.

The Best American Essays 2000, edited by Alan Lightman, is another diverse grouping, characterized by struggles with "truth, memory, and experience. Writers range from notable newcomers like Cheryl Strayed, a graduate student at Syracause University, to Wendell Berry and Cynthia Ozick.

For compelling short fiction, turn to The Best American Short Stories 2000. Edited by E.L. Doctorow, it offers the finest short stories chosen from American and Canadian magazines. New works by Annie Proulx, Walter Mosley and Raymond Carver are balanced by relative unknowns like Nathan Englander, whose authority and imagination make "The Gilgul of Park Avenue" a real heartbreaker.

The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2000 is the first in what promises to be a remarkable series. Oliver Sacks, Wendell Berry (again) and Peter Matthiessen are some of the acclaimed writers represented. Paul DePalma's kvetchy "http://www.when_is_enough_ enough?.com" is a delightfully depressing plea to examine the Faustian bargain we strike with our own personal computers.

Another new addition to the Best American Series is The Best American Travel Writing 2000, edited by Bill Bryson. Readers are in safe hands with a guy whose last three travel books have been blockbuster bestsellers. Bryson's hand-picked 25 stories are predictable only by being unpredictable and engrossing. Take "The Toughest Trucker in the World" by Tom Clynes, about a man whose daily grind involves 18-foot alligators, leeches and some of Australia's harshest terrain. Or "Lard is Good for You" by Alden Jones, a coffee-starved gringa trying to go native in a small Costa Rican village.

The Best American Sports Writing 2000 has been delivering dramatic, thought-provoking pieces to fans for 10 years. Particularly interesting are the stories about lesser-known sports like machine gunning, curling, poker and cockfighting. The definition of "sport may be open to discussion, but the quality of writing is not.

In Best New American Voices 2000, an eclectic group of short stories has been sifted from the fertile ground of the most prestigious writing programs in the United States and Canada. It is the inaugural effort of a new series and ideal for lovers of cutting-edge fiction. No celebrated authors here, just those who promise to be groundbreakers.

Finally, in The Best American Poetry 2000, Rita Dove has distilled the finest work of her colleagues. Good poems are already distilliations of the complex chemistry of thought and feeling, so this book more than any other in the bunch gives us "the voice that is great within us. From the unnerving confessions of A.R. Ammons's "Shot Glass," to the radical refashioning of faith in Mark Jarman's "Epistle," to the sustained aria of discovery in Mary Oliver's "Work," this is the innermost country of America, and it is our country at its best.

Joanna Brichetto is on BookPage's list of best reviewers.

Readers in search of the best new writing in America need not search far. Trustworthy editors have scrutinized a year's worth of publications in nearly every field to cull the finest short stories, sports writing, mystery stories, essays, travel writing and poetry for new…

PhotographyNatureMusicArts & Culture

Get ready, get set, shop!

Review by James Dickerson

As the holidays approach, bookstore shelves are already beginning to fill with gift books that are big, bold, beautiful and beguiling. If you're the type who likes to get an early start, we have a few selections to jumpstart your holiday shopping.

When prize-winning documentary maker Ken Burns "discovered" jazz, it was an eye-opening experience. Like so many others, the New Yorker thought he knew exactly what jazz was all about, only to learn, once he began his research, just how far off the mark he had been. Jazz: A History of America's Music is a companion volume to Burns' 10-part PBS series on jazz scheduled to air in January 2001. Co-written by Geoffrey C. Ward, this book offers a compact history of the jazz era, along with a splendid collection of photographs. Not meant to be a comprehensive guide, the book focuses primarily on the music and lives of Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker and Miles Davis, though scores of other musicians are drawn into the narrative. It is through the lives of those four men that Burns and Ward are able to present the larger picture of how a peculiarly Southern art form transformed an entire nation.

If someone on your list has an interest in history, particularly the time period from 1492 to 1600, then you're in luck. Historical Atlas of Exploration, by museum curator Angus Konstam, is a fascinating guide to the golden age of world exploration. Konstam details the dates and events associated with explorers such as Ferdinand Magellan, St. Francis Xavier, Vasco Nunez de Balboa and Sir Francis Drake, to name a few. The maps, illustrations and color photographs are first rate, and the stories are often spellbinding: These explorers were, after all, among the world's first superstars.

In your search for a captivating gift, consider the butterfly. Over the centuries, these sprightly beauties have captured the imaginations of naturalists, poets and children. A World for Butterflies: Their Lives, Behavior and Futureexamines the life cycle and patterns of the insect world's most charismatic species. Written by Phillip Schappert, a charter member of the North American Butterfly Association, the book details the life cycles of butterflies, from egg to caterpillar to winged insect. More than 300 color photographs, all beautifully done, show the various stages of a butterfly's life, making the book an ultimate guide to the world of butterflies. Also noteworthy is The Family Butterfly Bookby Rick Mikula, which offers projects and activities in addition to field-guide information. At a time when we are inundated with celebrity images every day on television and in newspapers and magazines, it is important to remember that the first modern-day celebrity photographers were artists in their own right. One in particular comes to mind: Lord Snowdon, born Tony Armstrong-Jones, has been taking photographs of celebrities for nearly half a century.

Photographs By Snowdon is a retrospective collection of the British photographer's work. Included are photographs drawn from his entire career, with special emphasis placed on his images of the royal family (his photos of Princess Diana offer a haunting window into her soul) and movie stars such as Vanessa Redgrave, Uma Thurman and Emma Thompson. Snowdon's photo of Richard Harris and Peter O'Toole having tea in an ornate hotel says more about celebrity than words could ever tell. Agatha Christie, sitting at a writing hutch, dressed to the nines but wearing color-coordinated house slippers, creates an atmosphere of mystery that is both daunting and fragile at the same instant. When it comes to portraits, Snowdon is about as good as it gets.

As the holidays approach, bookstore shelves are already beginning to fill with gift books that are big, bold, beautiful and beguiling. If you're the type who likes to get an early start, we have a few selections to jumpstart your holiday shopping.

When prize-winning documentary maker…

NonfictionNatureHumor

Where the Deer and the Antelope Play

Review by Alice Cary

There’s no denying that Nick Offerman is one of America’s more intriguing celebrities. The man who made Ron Swanson famous in “Parks and Recreation” is also a touring comedian, saxophonist, professional woodworker and author of books like Paddle Your Own Canoe and Good Clean Fun. His latest is Where the Deer and the Antelope Play, which Offerman has subtitled in his frequently reflective, self-deprecating style: The Pastoral Observations of One Ignorant American Who Loves to Walk Outside. And boy does he.

Offerman divides his observations among three very different adventures, all devoted to exploring his relationship with America’s landscapes and past. He’s an entertaining raconteur and prone to digressions (Sirius Radio commercials that annoy him, for example, or his irritation with people who don’t make eye contact as he jogs past). The result is an undeniable immediacy, as though readers are spending the day hiking right beside him.

Offerman’s first quest is a culture lover’s dream: He spent a week in 2019 hiking in Glacier National Park with his “bromance partners,” author George Saunders and Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy. The pals have great discussions about nature, America’s deplorable treatment of Indigenous and Black people, and the writers Wendell Berry and Aldo Leopold, two of Offerman’s heroes. There are humorous missteps as well, bringing to mind Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods, although Offerman’s descriptions of the glorious trails will leave readers ready to make a beeline to Glacier.

Nick Offerman narrates the audiobook for ‘Where the Deer and the Antelope Play.’ Read our review.

The second section examines farming and land use, framed by repeated visits to Offerman’s friend James Rebanks, an English sheep farmer in Cumbria, England, and author of the ecological books The Shepherd’s Life and Pastoral Song. Rebanks embraces a robust, self-sufficient agrarian lifestyle that Midwestern-born Offerman admires and is thrilled to jump into. As always, his enthusiasm is contagious. 

Finally, Offerman and his wife, actress Megan Mullally (whom he clearly worships), set off in the fall of 2020 in their newly acquired Airstream trailer on a COVID-19 road trip to explore places like Sedona, Arizona, and the banks of the Rio Grande. It’s fun reading about these two actors on the road, facing everyday issues and sometimes-humorous misfortunes. Offerman’s frequent solo hikes during this trip offer him a chance to ramble (and rant) on a variety of subjects, many of them political.

Laced with humor, intellect and fierce passion, Where the Deer and the Antelope Play is an entertaining getaway to a variety of unexpected American vistas.

Readers of Nick Offerman’s latest work of comedic, ecological greatness will feel as though they’re spending the day hiking right beside him.
NonfictionNatureEnvironment

Believers

Review by Deborah Hopkinson

Poet, essayist and cultural commentator Lisa Wells takes on the complexities of our relationship to the climate crisis in Believers: Making a Life at the End of the World, a thought-provoking and heady mix of memoir, journalism and philosophy. Wells isn’t writing as a scientist or futurist here but as a former teenage idealist—someone who, as she puts it, “drifted into adulthood” after dropping out of high school and spending months in a wilderness survival program to gain the knowledge and skills needed to “form egalitarian villages on the post-apocalyptic frontier.”

Wells grew up in the Pacific Northwest in the 1990s and threads her personal journey throughout the book. “When we were kids, my friends and I went looking for a unified and stable theory of how to live—propping up idols and knocking them off their pedestals,” she writes. Eventually Wells realizes, “There is no solution to the problems we face, but there are solutions.”

Exploring those solutions drives the narrative of Believers. Wells seeks out a variety of people whose radical responses to the climate crisis challenge and defy the norm. The characters she profiles are varied and fascinating, and their stories may resonate with older readers who remember their own idealism during the 1960s counterculture movement.

One particularly strong presence in the book is the late Finisia Medrano, whom Wells met while Medrano was leading a group of ecological activists in the dry desert landscape of eastern Oregon. Wells dubs her “an itinerant outlaw,” dedicated to rewilding the American desert with foragable food so people can survive the eventual collapse of society.

Wells also explores the growing severity of wildfires in the West. One section details the work of Indigenous Americans such as Ron Goode, the Tribal Chairman of the North Fork Mono in California, to revitalize the landscape by reintroducing traditional practices like controlled burns and to shift our cultural understanding of the West’s fire-adapted landscapes.

While Wells is adept at communicating her own coming-of-age story and life journey, Believers is most compelling when the author allows the fascinating people she meets to speak for themselves, providing a rich mosaic of perspectives on life in the 21st century. Believers is a reckoning with climate change and a testimony about how to live on our threatened planet that will engage thoughtful citizens everywhere.

Poet and cultural commentator Lisa Wells profiles a variety of people whose radical responses to the climate crisis defy the norm.
NonfictionNatureAnimals

The Blue Wonder

Review by Henry L. Carrigan Jr.

Although oceans cover over two-thirds of our planet’s surface, we’ve spent more time and money probing the deep blue of the stratosphere than we have diving into the waters that lap at our shores, to our detriment. With a passionate love for and fervent desire to educate us about the depth of the ocean’s resources, as well as about our lack of understanding and mismanagement of them, Frauke Bagusche’s captivating The Blue Wonder: Why the Sea Glows, Fish Sing, and Other Astonishing Insights From the Ocean plunges us into the mysteries of the ocean. Along the way, Bagusche shares stories of the fascinating creatures that dwell there, as well as the increasing dangers the oceans face from human misuse.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Summer reading 2021: 9 books to soak in this season

As Bagusche points out, many of us only see the ocean from the sands of a beach and therefore never discover the teeming life and unbelievable animals that swim beneath that surface. Guiding readers below the waves, Bagusche introduces them to the microplankton that move, often in phosphorescent schools, throughout the waters, providing food for animals from shrimp to blue whales. She takes us on a journey to the coral reefs, the nurseries of the sea, where we meet clown mantis shrimp and learn about the appendages they develop to help them adapt to the reefs. We also learn why some seas taste saltier than others and about the difficult but wondrous journey of sea turtles, the singing of whales and the giant squids and isopods that are the denizens of the bathysphere, the ocean’s deepest and darkest waters.

The Blue Wonder takes its place alongside Carl Safina’s Song for the Blue Ocean in revealing the marvelous marine world and the urgent need to preserve a dazzling ecosystem we too often neglect.

With a passionate love for the ocean, Frauke Bagusche plunges readers into the dazzling mysteries of the sea.
NonfictionNatureMemoir

Seed to Dust

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

To whom does a garden belong? In his work as a gardener, Marc Hamer (How to Catch a Mole) has heard tales of property owners who take offense when landscapers feel some sense of ownership over their work. Hamer’s employer, whom he has dubbed Miss Cashmere, isn’t so territorial.

But Hamer doesn’t crave ownership. He believes a garden belongs to all who see it. “This is not my garden, but it’s not hers, either,” he writes. “Just paying for something doesn’t make it yours. Nothing is ever yours. People who work with the earth and the people who think they own bits of it see the world in totally different ways.”

In Seed to Dust: Life, Nature, and a Country Garden, Hamer showcases his intimate knowledge of the natural world. The book is organized by season, resembling a diary of a year in the garden. It’s a lyrical reflection on days spent with hands in dirt and decisions based on close observation of the weather.

As he tends to Miss Cashmere’s land, Hamer also meditates on each plant’s history and place in the world. But his approach is never showy; in fact, Hamer often contemplates his own status with humility. His introspective ways led his father to devalue and dismiss him as a boy. Hamer later spent two years living without a home, and that experience colored his life, including how he approached parenting his own children, now grown.

As the year unfolds, Hamer reflects on the cycles to which all living things are bound. Little happens in the narrative, save for the dramatic living and dying of all things, but Hamer’s careful eye for detail and deep knowledge of the garden’s dozens upon dozens of plants are used to great effect, creating a lush landscape into which a reader can disappear. In Seed to Dust, Hamer invites readers to join him in quiet meditation on the earth.

Hamer uses his deep knowledge of gardens to great effect, creating a lush landscape into which a reader can disappear.
NonfictionNature

Holding Back the River

Review by Becky Libourel Diamond

The mighty Mississippi, Missouri and Ohio rivers are part of a vital transportation network in America’s heartland, yet they are precariously held in place by a series of locks, dams, dikes and levees. Even minor floods have proved catastrophic, and the issue continues to worsen due to an aging infrastructure coupled with the effects of climate change.

This escalating situation is presented in vivid detail by journalist Tyler J. Kelley in his debut book, Holding Back the River: The Struggle Against Nature on America’s Waterways. Piecing together historical accounts from diaries, journals and letters alongside interviews with modern-day experts such as engineers, geologists and farmers, Kelley describes the delicate dance performed every day to ferry massive amounts of goods along these waterways and relays how they came to play such an important role in America’s economy.

It’s a symbiotic relationship, as “the vast levee network protects the farmland where grain is grown, and grain is among the biggest commodities moving on the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers.” But like a wild stallion, these rivers are powerful forces of nature that are difficult to tame. As Kelley writes, “In the last five thousand years, the [Mississippi River] has used six different outlets,” a natural process of delta-building and abandonment that “created all of south Louisiana.” The same formidable energy that rearranges the earth in the Mississippi Delta eventually weakens the structures holding the rivers in place, and the expense to build, repair and maintain them is astronomical. 

And when a hurricane or flood hits, countless communities are impacted or displaced. As Kelley notes, income inequality and natural disasters go hand in hand. Yet ferrying goods is often prioritized over the people whose livelihoods are affected by the river’s destructive power.

There’s no clear, quick solution to these interlocking problems, but Kelley suggests some interesting possibilities, such as creating more river commissions to plan for worst case scenarios before they actually happen. Holding Back the River is a riveting depiction of an issue that is not going away anytime soon.

Tyler J. Kelley examines the delicate dance of commerce and nature on America's waterways—and presents some creative solutions to maintain the equilibrium.
NonfictionNatureEssays

Vesper Flights

Review by Anna Christensen

In her follow-up to 2015’s H Is for Hawk, Helen Macdonald examines intersections—of the natural world and the global one, of the scientific and the spiritual, of human and animal, of the modern world and the ancient, enduring one. Her literary pupil contracts and dilates over and over throughout Vesper Flights. An avid observer of minute detail, she makes an exact science of drawing a personal moment into tight focus before whooshing out to take a view so wide it engulfs the entire present. 

Macdonald's bite-size essays offer meditations on home, placelessness, the refugee crisis and climate change, all projected through animals who appear in dual form: as their biological selves, examined, explained and marveled at; and their ancient, archetypal manifestations. For every paragraph detailing the flight instincts of swifts, there is another ruminating on the lessons humans derive from these creatures. The essay “Deer in Headlights” vibrates with dark, forested strangeness. Touching on the mystical meaning of deer in a distant time, the unfortunate but ordinary event of a car crash with a deer is transmuted into something terrible and Dionysian. The entire essay becomes shot through with a violent divinity, nodding to the darker feelings that feather around the edges of our emotions surrounding these accidents.

These animal depictions, two-sided and meditative, act as a relational vehicle to carry us through the shock of the Anthropocene, where we’ve come to think of animals as mere creatures. Macdonald espouses a more holistic approach to connecting with animals—one that marries natural science to the heartfelt stirrings that humans have long felt in a furred or feathered presence. “Animals don’t exist in order to teach us things, but that is what they have always done,” she writes, “and most of what they teach us is what we think we know about ourselves.”

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Love audiobooks? Check out Vesper Flights and other nonfiction audiobook picks.

In her follow-up to 2015’s H Is for Hawk, Helen Macdonald examines intersections—of the natural world and the global one, of the scientific and the spiritual, of human and animal, of the modern world and the ancient, enduring one. Her literary pupil contracts and dilates over and…

NonfictionNatureEssays

World of Wonders

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

Poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s writing often praises the earth and its bounty. In her first nonfiction work, World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments, Nezhukumatathil expands her reflections into essays accompanied by illustrations by Fumi Nakamura.

Nezhukumatathil’s delight in the world isn’t dulled by the world’s racism, but she doesn’t shy away from sharing her experiences of being on the receiving end of discrimination. In third grade, for example, Nezhukumatathil drew a peacock, her favorite animal, for the class animal-drawing contest. She had just returned from southern India, her father’s native country, and she was elated by its colorful animals. Her teacher was less enamored. “Some of us will have to start over and draw American animals. We live in Ah-mer-i-kah!” the teacher declared after spotting Nezhukumatathil’s drawing.

Both of Nezhukumatathil’s parents are immigrants (her mother is from the Philippines), and throughout World of Wonders, she describes the foundation they laid for her and her sister. As their family moved across the country, her parents encouraged their daughters to experience the outdoors. No matter their ZIP code, Nezhukumatathil followed her curiosity and found a home in the natural world. 

That childhood connection to nature echoes through her adulthood, where plants and animals connect Nezhukumatathil’s present to her past. The catalpa tree offered shade for Nezhukumatathil and her sister as they walked from their home in Kansas to the hospital where their mother worked. When Nezhukumatathil moves to Oxford, Mississippi, to teach at the university, she expects to need the catalpa tree to provide shelter from people’s curiosity about her brown skin. But no one stares at her in Mississippi. Instead, the trees provide shade as she rushes to class, just as they did years ago.

By examining the world around her, Nezhukumatathil finds an ongoing sense of connection to that world, signaling to her like a firefly: “They blink on and off, a lime glow to the summer night air, as if to say: I am still here, you are still here, I am still here, you are still here, I am, you are, over and over again.” World of Wonders is as sparkling as an armful of glass bangles and as colorful as the peacocks that first captured Nezhukumatathil’s imagination. 

Poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s writing often praises the earth and its bounty. In her first nonfiction work, World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments, Nezhukumatathil expands her reflections into essays accompanied by illustrations by Fumi Nakamura.

Nezhukumatathil’s delight in the world…

NonfictionNatureMemoir

Two Trees Make a Forest

Review by Priscilla Kipp

Like the sequoias of the U.S. Pacific Northwest, red and yellow cedars in Taiwan are so huge that just two of them, writes environmental historian Jessica J. Lee, can look and feel like a whole forest. She finds them as she hikes through the mountainous spine of the country where her beloved grandfather Gong was sent home to die, alone in the dementia of Alzheimer’s. Lee still grieves his solitary death and is determined to learn more about his life from before he and Po, her “irascible, difficult grandmother,” became Canadian immigrants. In Taiwan, where Lee is both stranger and descendant, her compass is a barely decipherable letter left behind by Gong, written as his mind disintegrated. Two Trees Make a Forest: In Search of My Family’s Past Among Taiwan’s Mountains and Coasts charts her ardent quest to discover and reconcile her family’s past with her need to claim an ancestral home.

Her journey is a challenge. Taiwan’s language is almost as foreign to Lee as its landscape—volcanic fumaroles, towering peaks enveloped in fog and the constant threat of mudslides and earthquakes. Lee studies the calligraphy of both Taiwanese and Chinese (her mother speaks Mandarin) and sprinkles her memoir with the illustrations that help her find her way through the two languages. Still, as she visits her mother’s crowded childhood home city of Taipei, Lee’s biracial features and diffident tongue reveal her as a foreigner. 

Taiwan has a complicated history, explored and exploited by Europeans and tossed back and forth between Japan and China. Lee learns that Gong was a fighter pilot with the famous Flying Tigers, risking his life on secret missions and rewarded for his bravery. Injured in a 1969 crash that should have killed him, he could no longer fly and left Taiwan for the promise of flying in Canada, only to become a factory janitor instead. 

Lee finds her own ways of imprinting her rediscovered homeland on her spirit. Using her skills as a scholar, she identifies the many species she finds as she hikes and bikes through the countryside, some existing nowhere else in the world. As Taiwan reveals itself, Lee comes to a kind of peace. Gong’s past and her present, so evocatively examined, suggest the forest she needed to find.

Like the sequoias of the U.S. Pacific Northwest, red and yellow cedars in Taiwan are so huge that just two of them, writes environmental historian Jessica J. Lee, can look and feel like a whole forest. She finds them as she hikes through the mountainous…

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