The View From Lazy Point
by Carl Safina
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Naturalist Carl Safina’s record of a year spent at his Long Island, N.Y., ocean-side cottage “has its own natural, almost tidal rhythm,” said Susan Salter Reynolds in the Los Angeles Times. The author proves that “the best way to get people to care about wilderness, short of dragging them to it, is with writing that conjures breezes and smells and a sense of scale.” Safina “relies on beauty” for his faith in the future, and finds plenty of beauty on Lazy Point.
The Quiet World
by Douglas Brinkley
(HarperCollins, $30)
Douglas Brinkley’s new tribute to the Alaskan wilderness turns a sprawling, eight-decade conservation drama into very readable history, said Michael Scott in the Cleveland Plain Dealer. The best-selling historian clearly has little sympathy for the many would-be “pillagers and despoilers” through the years who hoped to tap Alaska’s natural resources. Still, his book “brims with vivid characters,” from John Muir to Ansel Adams, who fought for the conservation cause and ultimately prevailed.
The Magnetic North
by Sara Wheeler
(Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $26)
The Arctic Circle is apparently not the “crisp, white wonderland” we imagine, said Holly Morris in The New York Times. Author Sara Wheeler keeps an eye open for remnants of its “raw beauty,” but she’s discovered that this “poorly regulated” patch of earth long ago became a dumping ground. As she explores various ecological disasters caused by oil drilling and nuclear-waste disposal, it becomes ever more frightening to consider that the Arctic’s fate may foretell the fate of the planet.
Hot
by Mark Hertsgaard
(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $25)
It’s hard to believe that any new book about the dangers of global warming would do much good, said Bill Williams in The Boston Globe. In this “passionate and somber” new work, veteran environmental reporter Mark Hertsgaard does his best to argue for a “Green Apollo” project to counter a possible 7-degree temperature rise over the next century. But while Hot is well researched and well argued, it “might appeal more to policymakers than average readers.”
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Also of interest...in picture books for grown-upsfeature How About Never—Is Never Good for You?; The Undertaking of Lily Chen; Meanwhile, in San Francisco; The Portlandia Activity Book
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Author of the week: Karen Russell
feature Karen Russell could use a rest.
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The Double Life of Paul de Man by Evelyn Barish
feature Evelyn Barish “has an amazing tale to tell” about the Belgian-born intellectual who enthralled a generation of students and academic colleagues.
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Book of the week: Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis
feature Michael Lewis's description of how high-frequency traders use lightning-fast computers to their advantage is “guaranteed to make blood boil.”
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Also of interest...in creative rebellion
feature A Man Called Destruction; Rebel Music; American Fun; The Scarlet Sisters
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Author of the week: Susanna Kaysen
feature For a famous memoirist, Susanna Kaysen is highly ambivalent about sharing details about her life.
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You Must Remember This: Life and Style in Hollywood’s Golden Age by Robert Wagner
feature Robert Wagner “seems to have known anybody who was anybody in Hollywood.”
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Book of the week: Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson’s Lost Pacific Empire by Peter Stark
feature The tale of Astoria’s rise and fall turns out to be “as exciting as anything in American history.”