* The Ugly History of Beautiful Things by Katy Kelleher

The author of The Ugly History of Beautiful Things: Essays on Desire and Consumption explores her favorite luxuries and whether she’s talking about mirrors, flowers, makeup, silk, or perfumes, she is able to expose some disastrous exploitation of natural resources or workers required to create said luxury, or an unsavory aspect of their consumption. It’s all pretty depressing and a reminder not to indulge blindly.

** The Evil Men Do by Jack McMahon

Our detective friend P.T. Marsh is back in The Evil Men Do and the mood darkens from awful to the evil of the title, with a large count of corpses and a contract killer. Still over the top, but good enough to entice me to read the next installment!

** The Bald Eagle by Jack Davis

The Bald Eagle: The Improbable Journey of America’s Bird is a long and exhaustive exploration of the US national symbol, from its unlikely choice through the lore of stories about it snatching babies and livestock (totally impossible!). My favorite part of the story is when the author explores how the bald eagle almost disappeared because of pesticides and hunting and how it was brought back to flourish through conservation efforts and protection–legislation passed during a Republican administration, it’s interesting to note.

* Bewilderment by Richard Powers

Bewilderment stars an astrobiologist whose wife has died in a car accident and whose young son is enmeshed in fantasy and not doing well. Inexplicably, he enrolls his son in an experimental, seemingly highly dangerous neurofeedback treatment, the results of which will be predictably disastrous. I spent my entire time reading the book shaking my head about the father’s utter confusion about how to raise a child post-disaster. (There are lovely passages describing the awe of nature, contrasting with the ineptitude.)

* The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury

After reading Dandelion Wine, I thought I would try the classic The Martian Chronicles, which follows the same construction of linked but standalone vignettes and follows a series of human explorations of Marx. Like Dandelion Wine, The Martian Chronicles are artfully written and curiously frozen in time: the fifties, that is, when explorers were all white males, smoked plenty of cigarettes, and liked their women obedient and in the kitchen. It’s a true time capsule. Not to say that there are not plenty of modern themes in the stories, in particular environmental devastation, but I just could not get past the outdated social and technological assumptions that pervaded all the stories.. 

** Dark August by Katie Tallo

After an unexpected inheritance, the heroine of Dark August moves back to her great grandmother’s house where she finds documents from her (long dead) mother’s dead cases. She starts her own, very amateurish search, and is soon involved in a tangled mystery that puts a life at risk–not that it will suggest to her to stop or get help. I was disappointed by the Deus-ex-machina ending (really DeA ex machina) but the plot is seriously twisted and enjoyable.

** Becoming Wild by Carl Safina

I’m not sure why anyone would deny that animals have cultures, and I’m not sure why the author chose such an over-the-top subtitle, but I enjoyed Becoming Wild: How Animal Cultures Raise Families, Create Beauty, and Achieve Peace. At least when the author shows us how sperm whales, macaws, and chimps raise their young in differentiated communities that both carry the customs of the past but also adapt to new or disappearing threats. The rants about preserving the environment seem a bit superfluous: if we understand the value of non-human societies, surely we will want to find solutions that work for everyone?

*** Trace Elements by Donna Leon

Want to escape? How about another installment of Inspector Brunetti, who is moving in summer-hot-and-humid Venice this time, trying to solve a mysterious death reported by a now-dead woman. Trace Elements has plenty of time for jetting around the city in the police boat, partaking of coffee drinks appropriate to the time of day, and ragging on the hordes of tourists, along with some consideration for the fact that our friend Brunetti doesn’t like Agamemnon. As I said, a nice escapist read.

** Underland by Robert Macfarlane

The author of Underland: A Deep Time Journey explores caves, quarries, the Paris catacombs, abandoned mines, storage caverns for nuclear waste, sinkholes, and more, some with legit guides and others not so much. He’s interested in prehistoric art, the health of the ice cap, war crimes, and plant mutualism. The book strongly reminded me of Being a Beast for its maverick feel and ability to describe the feelings of being in very odd places.

 

* Grinnell by John Taliaferro

I just could not warm up to Grinnell: America’s Environmental Pioneer and His Restless Drive to Save the West, a meticulously researched biography of George Grinnell, stockbroker turned environmental activist, founder of the Audubon Society and proponent of the Endangered Species Act. Why? For one, the pace of the book is glacial, recounting, day by day, Grinnell’s travels in the West, along with all kinds of less relevant stories such as the amount of money he sent to his mother in law. Also, having read  The Fair Chase, I already knew parts of the story. But the main obstacle was Grinnell himself, a rich New Yorker who, granted, did not spend his money on parties and cars, but still acted as if Yellowstone, once protected as a national park, should be his own playground and not shared with the hoi polloi. And while the writer defends his pretty racist views of Native Americans (always called “Indians” in the text!) as enlightened for the time, that’s a pretty low standard.

Fun fact: in Grinnell’s days, freshmen at Yale studied algebra and geometry. Not too taxing, right? They did study Latin and Greek, however, presumably not to be lumped in with the aforementioned hoi polloi.