Books

Cooked By Pollan

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A new book by one of our go-to food writers in a publication new to us:

The following is an excerpt from Michael Pollan’s Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation, out from the Penguin Press on April 23.

As I grew steadily more comfortable in the kitchen, I found that, much like gardening, most cooking manages to be agreeably absorbing without being too demanding intellectually. It leaves plenty of mental space for daydreaming and reflection. One of the things I reflected on is the whole question of taking on what in our time has become, strictly speaking, optional, even unnecessary work, work for which I am not particularly gifted or qualified, and at which I may never get very good. This is, in the modern world, the unspoken question that hovers over all our cooking: Why bother? Continue reading →

Swept Away

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The “Three C’s” on our banner are more than words. They solidify into reality and action when people with similar views and interests reach out to us after reading them. This is what happened recently when Jennifer Harrington, a Toronto-based illustrator, writer and graphic designer introduced herself to us. Her collaboration with illustrator Michael Arnott on an eBook and animated short film versions of the The Spirit Bear and other stories is aimed at educating children about conservation while entertaining them at the same time.

Although sounding like a character out of Native American legend, the ghost or spirit bear actually

come from a small community of bears called Kermodes, which are a subspecies of black bears. Kermode bears may be black or white, but they all carry the recessive gene for white fur. 10% of Kermodes will fully express the recessive gene, and will be born with white or cream-coloured fur. Continue reading →

Photographs Of Life In Pre-Soviet Russia

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From a photographer-centric website called Lens Culture, this photobook review of a collection called Nostalgia helps us visually ponder a now forgotten world through a particular lens:

Nostalgia: The Russian Empire of Czar Nicholas II Captured in Color Photographs

photographs by Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii Continue reading →

Nature Books: Birds

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Looking through this publisher‘s catalogue, we see they give attention to a wide variety of charismatic flora and fauna.  For example, this book (click the image above to go to the source):

Birds of the World: 365 Days gives this perennially popular subject the 365 treatment: ornithologist and conservationist Philippe J. Dubois presents a “day in the life” of a year’s worth of species from five continents. The stunning images of birds in action, taken by some of the best avian photographers in the world, illustrate the text beautifully. Continue reading →

Whales In Perspective

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Abrams, publisher of the book above, was also publisher for another conservation-friendly artist featured on our pages. They have a series of books that showcase wonders of nature in spectacular fashion, and we encourage a visit to their site by clicking the image above:

Photographer and conservationist Bryant Austin’s breathtaking photographic project Beautiful Whale is the first of its kind: It chronicles his fearless attempts to reach out to whales as fellow sentient beings. Continue reading →

The Great Paddy-City Migration

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For those of us living and working in Rising Asia, much in this book either rings true from experience or is eye-opening about things that may be lurking just around the corner, out of sight.  Kerala is a long way from Lahore, in every sense.  But at least the basic notion–that the world has only in the last year or so become one in which a majority of us are urban dwellers for the first time in human history, and not long from now it will be a super-majority–can be felt in Raxa Collective’s back yard.  The great migration from paddy to city is noisily happening all around us each day.  What of it?

Mr. Hamid has alot to say about that, good, bad and ugly.  An interview he conducted to discuss the book can be heard in this podcast.  The book is likely to anger some, but it has received positive reviews, even from often-tough critics:

“Mr. Hamid reaffirms his place as one of his generation’s most inventive and gifted writers.” –Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

Continue reading →

Happy Birthday, Douglas Adams

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One year ago today I posted this to make sure that anyone who loves this author would be aware that there are still opportunities to celebrate his life in tangible, meaningful ways that he would have appreciated.  I encourage anyone and everyone to continue to do so because the conservation needs have grown rather than diminished.  You might also enjoy his final public appearance above, which will give you 90 minutes of intense amusement and learning.   Continue reading →

Katrina, Come To Kerala!

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Thanks to this book review in the New York Times we see Katrina in a light similar to that of several other remarkable people we have strongly urged to visit our neck of the woods.  Katrina’s work is illustrated above and in these images from her website.

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From the description of her new book we would find some of this work challenging (as anatomical renderings can sometimes be), but from an artistic, craft/technical and scientific point of view, phenomenal:

There is more to a bird than simply feathers. And just because birds evolved from a single flying ancestor, doesn’t mean they are structurally all the same. With over 300 stunning drawings representing 200 species, The Unfeathered Bird is the most richly illustrated book on bird anatomy ever produced and offers a refreshingly original insight into what goes on beneath the surface. Continue reading →

Taking The Geek Out Of Greek

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We have already sung Stephen Greenblatt‘s praises several times, but why stop there? He has done something remarkable, making classicism classy:

Glories of Classicism

FEBRUARY 21, 2013

Stephen Greenblatt and Joseph Leo Koerner

The Classical Tradition

edited by Anthony Grafton, Glenn W. Most, and Salvatore Settis Belknap Press/ Harvard University Press, 1,067 pp., $49.95

Over a thousand pages in length, with some five hundred articles surveying the survival, transmission, and reception of the cultures of Greek and Roman antiquity, The Classical Tradition is a low-cost Wunderkammer, a vast cabinet of curiosities. Take the entry on the asterisk: you learn that this ubiquitous critical sign, named from the Greek for “small star,” originated in Ptolemaic Alexandria, where the great textual scholar Aristophanes of Byzantium and his student Aristarchus of Samothrace used them to mark repeated lines in the Iliad and Odyssey.

Continue reading →

Happy 75th Anniversary Caldecott!

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I’ve always loved books, and in many contexts those with fine illustrations are all the more powerful. That’s why I’m so grateful for the American Library Association’s Caldecott Medal for honoring the most distinguished American picture books.

The beloved titles are timeless – many are the same books that were read to me as I child, which I in turn read to my own children. I am confident this pattern will continue.

Listen to the story about this year’s winners here…

Uniquely No Direction Home

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Those of us living nomadic lives, moving from one set of responsibilities (or lack thereof) to another set in a different context, are often living by a compass we cannot quite figure out. A frequent first greeting in India, upon seeing someone who is clearly not from India, tends to be a variation on the question of where were you born. “Where do you stay?” (i.e. where is your residence at this moment) is the follow up to wondering where you are from.  “Where are you going?” is rarely of concern.  It seems understood by all that there may be no return to the place of birth, or the place where you stayed before, or other familiar places.

A new book surveys the animal kingdom for some remarkable examples of other creatures’ compasses. What about that cat that found its way 200 miles from an unknown location to the place where it normally lived? A review of the book in The Times Literary Supplement begins:

Curlews wing 6,000 miles, non-stop, along invisible bird-flying lanes in the sky as they travel from the South Pacific to Alaska. Spiny lobster crawl, one after the other, antennae to tail, for 30 miles along the ocean floor. Idaho salmon travel 900 miles and ascend 7,000 feet in elevation as they seek – and find – the tiny creek in which they hatched. Continue reading →

Really, Whole Foods?

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conscious capitalism_book cover

John Mackey has a new book out.  He is a visionary, no doubt.  He co-founded and co-leads a company we admire.  But he is not the sole shareholder in Whole Foods, and when he decides to be provocative, as he often does, the company’s reputation is at stake along with his own.  He claims not to be a climate change skeptic, but also says he does not believe we need to take any action because climate change is likely going to benefit humans.  Specifically, in an interview in the Guardian he says:

We’ve been in a gradual warming trend since the ending of the “Little Ice Age” in about 1870, and climate change is perfectly natural and not necessarily bad. Continue reading →

Nature’s Value

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5606A review of this provocative book appears in the Guardian (click the image of the book to the right to go to the review) and an interview with its author is here, via mp3 download or as an iTunes podcast.  The book’s blurb supports the reviewer’s conclusion that it is worth the read:

Money doesn’t grow on trees. Or does it? From Indian vultures to Chinese bees, nature provides ‘natural services’, 24/7. Recycling miracles in the soil; an army of predators ridding us of unwanted pests; an abundance of life creating a genetic codebook that underpins our food, pharmaceutical industries and much more. It’s been estimated that these are worth an annual $50 trillion Continue reading →

Mystery Bestseller

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Click the image of the book cover to go to the page in Guardian’s bookstore where it is available.  Click here to look at its standing on their best seller list.  Then, someone please explain its standing as the bestseller this week based on this synopsis:

Provides information on the fundamentals of biological oceanography. This book covers the properties of seawater which affect life in the ocean, classification of marine environments and organisms, phytoplankton and zooplankton, marine food webs, larger marine animals, life on the seafloor, and the way in which humans affect marine ecosystems. Continue reading →

Voyager’s Dilemma

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Harvard University Professor Joyce Chaplin talked about her book, Round About the Earth: Circumnavigation from Magellan to Orbit, in which she presents the history of the circumnavigation of earth, going back to the days of Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan. Professor Chaplin spoke at Harvard Book Store in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Three of our most viewed posts since starting this site in mid-2011 have to do with the intersection of travel (in all its various forms) and sustainability so when we saw this video and the related book reviews we could not help thinking it might resonate with readers who have enjoyed those three posts. One challenge for the modern voyager is an inverse of the same as that to a hospitality-providing organization such as ours going forward: how do we get there and back with the smallest footprint possible?  It is not the same question Magellan was asking but some of the “voyage issues” have not changed over the centuries.  Click the image above to go to the video, and here for a review of the book in the LA Times:

A trip on a 140-foot sailboat helped inspire Harvard professor Joyce E. Chaplin to write “Round About the Earth: Circumnavigation From Magellan to Orbit” — and that may explain the enthusiasm she brings to the many-stranded narrative. At the very least, it underlies her sympathy for sailors on small boats heading into rough, unknown seas.

This history, the first of its kind, is a lively charge through 500 years of worldwide exploration (and beyond). Chaplin sets to the task by carving that time span into three parts. Continue reading →

The Gift, A Gift

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Recent guests of Raxa Collective, mentioned here, handed Amie and me this book prior to our parting ways. Upon reading this blurb, we expected to find it enriching if and when we could find the time to read the gift, The Gift, which:

“actually deserves the hyperbolic praise that in most blurbs is so empty. It is the sort of book that you remember where you were and even what you were wearing when you first picked it up. The sort that you hector friends about until they read it too. This is not just formulaic blurbspeak; it is the truth. No one who is invested in any kind of art, in questions of what real art does and doesn’t have to do with money, spirituality, ego, love, ugliness, sales, politics, morality, marketing, and whatever you call ‘value,’ can read The Gift and remain unchanged.”—David Foster Wallace

Continue reading →

An Essay On The Essay, Disguised As A Book Review

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Sisley-Snow

‘Snow at Louveciennes’ by Alfred Sisley, 1878

It had not occurred to me that an essay, let alone a collection of essays, on this particular topic was needed.  But then, perhaps it helps make the point about the importance of essays, and here we have one of the finest living essayists in the English language at work making the case:

Winter Adam Gopnik
Quercus, pp.288, £18.99, ISBN: 9781780874449
Adam Gopnik’s dazzlingly knowledgeable and beautifully told essays on winter began life as the Massey Lecture Series on Canadian National Radio, the Canadian Reith lectures. But dismiss from your mind any of the rather  Continue reading →

An Old Fashioned Art And A Lesson In Craft

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You do not need to be a fan of William Styron to appreciate the letters in this book; you only need to care about the art and craft of writing; so we thank the author’s friends at Paris Review for making these samples available (see below):

“A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end,” explained William Styron in his 1954 Art of Fiction interview. “You live several lives while reading it. Its writer should, too.” Such is the experience in reading Styron’s Selected Letters, edited by Rose Styron and published this week. Alongside major cultural and political events of the latter half of the twentieth century are intimate accounts of family life, depression, writing, frustrations, and friendships.

Continue reading →

Marine Protected Areas As Collective Action

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There are newer, larger marine protected areas. How and why do such areas come to be and how do they fare? According to this review the book to the left explains, and is even published as an authorial act of entrepreneurial conservation:

The Phoenix Islands Protected Area (PIPA) came into existence in 2006.  It was, at the time, the largest marine protected area in the world and was the result of a courageous step by the government of the Republic of Kiribati – a South Pacific nation consisting of what was once known Continue reading →