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THE FINEST HOURS
THE TRUE STORY OF THE U.S. COAST GUARD’S MOST DARING SEA RESCUE
The coverage of the post-rescue inquiry slows the suspense at the end, but the authors provide an adequately action-packed...
From Tougias (Fatal Forecast: An Incredible True Tale of Disaster and Survival at Sea, 2007, etc.) and Sherman (Black Dragon, 2008, etc.), a brief but gripping tale of Coast Guard heroism.
On Jan. 18, 1952, a vicious storm slammed 70-foot waves into two different oil tankers, the Pendleton and the Fort Mercer, off the coast of Cape Cod, Mass. Both went down. Only the Fort Mercer was able to send a distress call, and during its rescue, the wreck of the Pendleton was discovered. The authors bounce between the two rescue efforts, providing moment-by-moment accounts peppered with detailed interviews with survivors. The Fort Mercer’s rescuers at one point watched helplessly as some survivors were swept into the sea to their deaths, and half of the wreck capsized and sank during the rescue operation. The Pendleton was rescued by a 36-foot Coast Guard lifeboat named only for its classification number, CG36500. A series of large waves swept its compass and other equipment overboard, and its engine was even knocked out of commission, though the crew managed to restart it. The 12-person-capacity CG36500 amazingly managed to save 32 members of the Pendleton’s crew. Tougias and Sherman ably narrate the desperate struggles of the crewmembers on both the wrecks and the rescue boats, and the visceral descriptions of the unrelenting storm will make readers appreciate the bravery of the men who put their lives on the line.
The coverage of the post-rescue inquiry slows the suspense at the end, but the authors provide an adequately action-packed account of rescue at sea.Pub Date: May 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4165-6721-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2009
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BOOK REVIEW
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WHY FISH DON'T EXIST
A STORY OF LOSS, LOVE, AND THE HIDDEN ORDER OF LIFE
A quirky wonder of a book.
A Peabody Award–winning NPR science reporter chronicles the life of a turn-of-the-century scientist and how her quest led to significant revelations about the meaning of order, chaos, and her own existence.
Miller began doing research on David Starr Jordan (1851-1931) to understand how he had managed to carry on after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroyed his work. A taxonomist who is credited with discovering “a full fifth of fish known to man in his day,” Jordan had amassed an unparalleled collection of ichthyological specimens. Gathering up all the fish he could save, Jordan sewed the nameplates that had been on the destroyed jars directly onto the fish. His perseverance intrigued the author, who also discusses the struggles she underwent after her affair with a woman ended a heterosexual relationship. Born into an upstate New York farm family, Jordan attended Cornell and then became an itinerant scholar and field researcher until he landed at Indiana University, where his first ichthyological collection was destroyed by lightning. In between this catastrophe and others involving family members’ deaths, he reconstructed his collection. Later, he was appointed as the founding president of Stanford, where he evolved into a Machiavellian figure who trampled on colleagues and sang the praises of eugenics. Miller concludes that Jordan displayed the characteristics of someone who relied on “positive illusions” to rebound from disaster and that his stand on eugenics came from a belief in “a divine hierarchy from bacteria to humans that point[ed]…toward better.” Considering recent research that negates biological hierarchies, the author then suggests that Jordan’s beloved taxonomic category—fish—does not exist. Part biography, part science report, and part meditation on how the chaos that caused Miller’s existential misery could also bring self-acceptance and a loving wife, this unique book is an ingenious celebration of diversity and the mysterious order that underlies all existence.
A quirky wonder of a book.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6027-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
THE BOOK OF EELS
OUR ENDURING FASCINATION WITH THE MOST MYSTERIOUS CREATURE IN THE NATURAL WORLD
Unsentimental nature writing that sheds as much light on humans as on eels.
An account of the mysterious life of eels that also serves as a meditation on consciousness, faith, time, light and darkness, and life and death.
In addition to an intriguing natural history, Swedish journalist Svensson includes a highly personal account of his relationship with his father. The author alternates eel-focused chapters with those about his father, a man obsessed with fishing for this elusive creature. “I can’t recall us ever talking about anything other than eels and how to best catch them, down there by the stream,” he writes. “I can’t remember us speaking at all….Because we were in…a place whose nature was best enjoyed in silence.” Throughout, Svensson, whose beat is not biology but art and culture, fills his account with people: Aristotle, who thought eels emerged live from mud, “like a slithering, enigmatic miracle”; Freud, who as a teenage biologist spent months in Trieste, Italy, peering through a microscope searching vainly for eel testes; Johannes Schmidt, who for two decades tracked thousands of eels, looking for their breeding grounds. After recounting the details of the eel life cycle, the author turns to the eel in literature—e.g., in the Bible, Rachel Carson’s Under the Sea Wind, and Günter Grass’ The Tin Drum—and history. He notes that the Puritans would likely not have survived without eels, and he explores Sweden’s “eel coast” (what it once was and how it has changed), how eel fishing became embroiled in the Northern Irish conflict, and the importance of eel fishing to the Basque separatist movement. The apparent return to life of a dead eel leads Svensson to a consideration of faith and the inherent message of miracles. He warns that if we are to save this fascinating creature from extinction, we must continue to study it. His book is a highly readable place to begin learning.
Unsentimental nature writing that sheds as much light on humans as on eels.Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-296881-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
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