Winter 2009 Reviews
The Atlas of the Real World: Mapping the Way We Live
By Daniel Dorling, Mark Newman, and Anna Barford
Thames & Hudson, 2008
Open The Atlas of the Real World and you’ll find pages and pages of maps that look like reflections from clown mirrors. On one page, Africa fills up half of the flattened globe; on another, the entire continent nearly disappears. Using principles from physics, the authors run raw data through a computer program to create cartograms in which the size of a landmass is proportional to any given variable, from forest growth and loss to meat exports to the gender balance among illiterate adults. The result is both aesthetic and informative. Click here to see a slide show of maps from The Atlas of the Real World
The Elephant’s Secret Sense: The Hidden Life of the Wild Herds of Africa
By Caitlin O’Connell
University of Chicago Press, 2008
The Elephant’s Secret Sense brings together the scientific, the personal, and the political into one elegant narrative. Caitlin O’Connell, assistant professor at Stanford University, details her years studying elephants in southern Africa and her eventual discovery of a unique form of communication used by the giant mammals: seismic listening. Elephants use their feet to “hear” vibrations traveling through the ground. Scenes from the African wilderness are interspersed with accounts of the conflict between elephants and humans throughout Africa. ❧
Early Spring: An Ecologist and Her Children Wake to a Warming World
By Amy Seidl
Beacon Press, 2008
Part nature journal, part personal narrative, Amy Seidl’s Early Spring documents the changes in climate—both those observed and those predicted to come—altering life in a small Vermont community. As the weather warms, it’s becoming more and more difficult to predict when the sugar maple harvest will occur. And longtime New England traditions, like ice fishing and pond hockey, may be gone forever. ❧
Becoming Good Ancestors: How We Balance Nature, Community, and Technology
By David Ehrenfeld
Oxford University Press, 2009
In a collection of essays on topics from genetic engineering to standardized testing, David Ehrenfeld takes a hard look at how quality of life in America has deteriorated along with our environment. If we want a future brighter both for us and the earth, Ehrenfeld believes we must turn away from rampant materialism and the pseudocommunities of the Internet and start strengthening our relationships with each other and with nature. The writing is sometimes cantankerous, often contemplative, and always entertaining. ❧
- Reviews by Judy Wexler
[...] Click here to read about The Atlas of the Real World, published by Thames & Hudson [...]