From his extended historical analysis of the journeys and insights of 19th-century biologist Alfred Russell Wallace to his field and laboratory interviews with many of the men and women who have followed in Wallace's intellectual wake, Quammen delightfully adds the human dimension to his discussion of science and natural history. Equally impressive are the character studies of the scientists who have been at the forefront of island biogeography. The Channel Islands off California and the Madagascan lemurs are captivatingly portrayed. The book is also a splendid example of natural history writing, for which Quammen traveled extensively. And we learn just how critical this field is in the face of massive habitat destruction. We learn how the discipline developed and how it has changed conservation biology. The scientific journalism is first-rate, with the extremely technical field of island biogeography made fully accessible. Quammen (Natural Acts) has successfully mixed genres in this highly impressive and thoroughly enjoyable work.
0 Comments
Shehan Karunatilaka is the first Sri Lankan author to win the Booker, and the Sri Lankan civil war was a consequential genocide in modern history. The novel is smart, it is funny, it is moving but it is ultimately the heinous territory of genocide, torture, dismemberment, beheadings, and assassinations that we traverse. In particular, the novel concerns itself with the unspeakable atrocities of the Tamil pogrom in July 1983, when, in the violent confrontation between the Liberation Tamil Tigers of Eelam (LTTE), the government, the military, and the Marxist radicals, hundreds of Tamil citizens were violently executed and burned to death in their homes and out in the streets. But Karunatilaka’s dead narrator tells his story skillfully and vivaciously with deadpan humor mixed in with unnerving descriptions of the Tamil genocide committed during the Sri Lankan civil war of the 1980s. This, in itself, is a striking fact about this novel as the second person pronoun is a difficult narrative voice to sustain meaningfully and entertainingly for nearly four hundred pages. A dead person who addresses himself in the second person “you” for the entirety of the novel is the narrator of Shehan Karunatilaka’s 2022 Booker Prize winning novel The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida. Everfair is not only a beautiful book but an educational and inspiring one that will give the reader new insight into an often ignored period of history. Everfair is told from a multiplicity of voices: Africans, Europeans, East Asians, and African Americans in complex relationships with one another, in a compelling range of voices that have historically been silenced. Nisi Shawl’s speculative masterpiece manages to turn one of the worst human rights disasters on record into a marvelous and exciting exploration of the possibilities inherent in a turn of history. Nisi Shawl’s debut is an ambitious, fresh take on the steampunk genre. Words like complex and multifaceted are appropriate sprawling and dense. 'A book with gorgeous sweep, spanning years and continents, loves and hates, histories and fantasies. But even if they can defeat their great enemy, a looming world war and political infighting may threaten to destroy everything they have built. This land, named Everfair, is set aside as a safe haven, an imaginary Utopia for native populations of the Congo as well as escaped slaves returning from America and other places where African natives were being mistreated. Everfair is an incredibly ambitious, fascinating novel. With this technology, Everfair will attempt to defeat the Belgian tyrant Leopold II. Fabian Socialists from Great Britian join forces with African-American missionaries to purchase land from the Belgian Congo’s “owner,” King Leopold II. Synopsis: Everfair is a wonderful Neo-Victorian alternate history novel that explores the question of what might have come of Belgium’s disastrous colonization of the Congo if the native populations had learned about steam technology a bit earlier. He was a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Anthropological Association and the American Economic Association. He was a member of the editorial board of Current History. He had done extensive research in the archives of France, Italy, and England. Carroll Quigley in his own words:Ĭarroll Quigley was a professor of history at the Foreign Service School of Georgetown University. Perhaps I’d be better off allowing Michael Chadwick to introduce Dr. In 1966, Michael L Chadwick wrote the introduction to a book entitled: “ Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in our Time.” The writer of the book was Carroll Quigley. Every now and then, I come across a book that is so very crucial for our understanding that I wish that everyone would read. Soon, she is recruited to go on dangerous rescue missions, raiding dangerous opium dens and tongs (Chinese criminal organization) to bring girls to safety. Because of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 prohibiting additional Chinese immigrants from coming to America, many Chinese girls came here illegally as paper daughters, on the pretense that they already had relatives in America.ĭolly quickly becomes a mother figure to most of the young girls at the home. The home is a safe haven for Chinese women who had been sold into slavery and prostitution. Based on true events, The Paper Daughters of Chinatown is a fascinating novel, bringing to light the heroic efforts of the real-life savior, Donaldina Cameron, who devoted her life to rescuing young Chinese girls from sex trafficking in the early 1900s.ĭonaldina (Dolly) Cameron is in her mid-20s when she accepts a position as a teacher at the Occidental Mission Home for Girls in San Francisco’s Chinatown. |