Rick Ridgeway has written a very informative and entertaining account of his 300 mile hike West to East across southern Kenya in 1997. The walk was metaphorically in THE SHADOW OF KILIMANJARO beginning on the summit of that great mountain and spanning the different ecological zones of mountain moraine, foothills, savannah, scrub, desert, and finally tropical white sand beaches of the Indian Ocean coast near Malindi. More significantly Ridgeway writes about his journey in the shadow of others who have written famously on Kenya, most significantly Hemingway, Dinesen, and Blixen. At yet another level this story is set in the shadow of Kenya's colonial history and its current struggles as a developing nation trying to make its way in the modern world.

Ridgeway deals with all the relevant issues - ecology and the environment, conservation, domestic politics, the economy, tourism, the romantic literary images, the colonial legacy, the Mau Mau uprisings, cultural, ethnic, and social issues. And he deals with them in the way good travel writing should. Simply present the facts as you get them and let others speak their truths. No moralizing and very little contextualizing and therefore very refreshing.

The image of Kenya that emerges is that of a real country. Not too much of the fantasy and gloss of a romantic wilderness nor the equally unreal vision of warring tribes at THE ENDS OF THE EARTH. Just reality. Strengths, weaknesses, beauty, blemishes, issues, agendas, and concerns. All the things that face a people making their way on a rapidly globalizing planet. Although Ridgeway's Kenya is a very different place than the country I knew in the 1960's when I lived there in my youth, it's still as rich and as alive as I remember it and Ridgeway has done an excellent job of bringing it home.

...off target scientifically and economically. Raymond Bonner, a well respected investigative journalist lived in Kenya for a few years in the early 1990's and he uncovered something. He says that much of the tourism revenue derived from safaris and visits to the big game parks such as Masaai Mara, Tsavo, Amboseli, Serengeti, Kruger, and Etosha was not benefiting the locals in the immediate areas. Further he came to see the dichotomy between how most Westerners view wildlife and how Africans do. Our view is colored by the romantic writings of Dinesen and Markham, and the adventurous hunting life enjoyed by Hemingway. Africans on the other hand see wildlife either as food or something to run away from. He's spot on with the reaction of a typical Kenyan toto who has been taught very early in life that "elephants are bad" because "they kill me." One star to Mr Bonner for his accurate assessment of the inadequacies of tourism development plans and programs for the environmental education of children in Kenya, Zimbabwe, and South Africa. The book gets another star for its exposure of the cultural biases and narrow self-interest that oftentimes politicizes organizations such as the WWF - the world's largest conservation agency - the World Wide Fund for Nature (formerly the World Wildlife Fund). However Mr Bonner runs out of stars and a persuasive argument when he proposes that it is AT THE HAND OF MAN (read Western white man and his do-good conservation ethics) that there is the greatest threat for the future of Africa's wildlife.

Mr Bonner is strongly opposed to the ban on ivory and he supports culling of elephant herds. Although he is eloquent in saying that he "can't understand" how someone would wish to hunt elephants or other big game, it is obvious from his arguments that he doesn't understand the close connection between culling and trophy hunting. I intend to deal with the book on it's scientific and economic arguments alone, and stay away from polarizing political ideology that sees everything as either cultural or science warfare. (I'm actually quite surprised that this book has not featured more in the debates as it is well written and Bonner certainly isn't shy in offering his opinion). Recent scientific work on the complexity of elephant social life and family structure, particularly the dominant role played by the matriarch, tends to undermine the scientific value of culling. Studies have shown that in times when overpopulation causes degradation of the environment (the main reason for culling) the matriarch utilizes a natural population-regulating system. She simply leads a group of female elephants away from the males in the herd to their eventual demise. Also man-made contraceptives that last for up to a year are now proving somewhat successful. On the economic front, wheras it's true that tourism revenues have not made much contribution due to corruption, mismanagement, or use for things other than community development, this is a double-edged sword argument. There is sufficient evidence to show that the revenues earned from the sale of culled elephant ivory (prior to the international ban) was not going to locals either. Further, when the ban was temporarily lifted in 1997, there was a concomitant increase in poaching. As for the income earned where trophy hunting is allowed as part of a culling process as in South Africa; let's just say "show me the money"! is probably the best analysis. Most of the money does not go to fees paid in Africa but in fact never even leaves the US. The majority is paid to the big US game hunting outfits that equip and organize the African hunting trips.

This book is a genuine attempt by a Westerner, who having lived in Africa, comes to some understanding of the gap between what we think about the continent and what it's really like and seeks to put his insights into words. It's also more than that. It is the work of a bright investigative journalist using his skills to expose some of the complexities of wildlife management and the biases that attend it. Unfortunately the book didn't stop there, it's still more. It's political. Bonner himself makes it so. "It was natural for me to take up this cause. I am a liberal, and a former public interest lawyer; I was a vegetarian for a period in the seventies and still eat very little meat, and I have been opposed to commercial whaling and cutting down forests." Oops there it is! Let the wars begin! and Bonner will desevedly get hit by both sides. Liberals will strike first slamming Bonner for saying that vegetarianism is a qualifying criteria for Liberalism! Conservatives will also go on the attack, when after reading the book, they realize that his real sympathies lie with them, and he makes a hash out of arguments they could defend. Everybody, fire away!

Most science writing nowadays must be interdisciplinary; able to use empirical evidence and relevant concepts, theories, and conclusions from vastly different fields of enquiry. Would you expect the same of a history book? Although this book's publishing category is science/environment it really should be history. The author says as much. This is "a history of - and for - environmentally tumultuous times". And that history is broad. From the ancient days when the book of Ecclesiastes was written to our modern era of Nobel Prize winning physicists, there has been a remarkable common conception of our planet as immutable and infinite. In contrast to the biblical gentleman who said there was nothing new under the sun, or physicist Robert Millikan who saw Earth's vastness as effectively shielding it from real harm from humanity, J R McNeill sees SOMETHING NEW UNDER THE SUN and it's simply that "the place of humankind within the natural world is not what it was."

Can we link man's history with that of the natural or biological world? Many have tried from both sides of the equation. Great historians and thinkers like Kant, Marx and Pierre Tielhard de Chardin have seen a direction and inevitability about history while Berlin and Popper spoke eloquently against historicism. This book doesn't go there nor does it tackle the attempt by some evolutionary biologists to explain all we see in life as determined at the genetic level. Great scientists from Einstein forward have sought some unifying or final theory and it's still going on. Today sociobiologists, quantum physicists and game theorists say they have the answers.

What McNeill contributes to this is his view that "in recent millennia, cultural evolution has shaped human affairs more than biological evolution has. Societies...unconsciously pursue survival strategies of adaptability or of supreme adaptation." The entire book is a brilliant exposition on this point. How mankind, like the rat, was a creature that used adaptability to select for fitness for exploitation of new niches created when short term environmental shocks killed off competition. I say "was" because McNeill convincingly argues that in the 20th century we have tended more towards the strategy of supreme adaptation. Best typified by the shark this is fine-tuned specialization that "is rewarded by continuous success only so long as governing conditions stay the same." The stability required for continued success in this system is based on "stable climate, cheap energy and water, and rapid population and economic growth". Through chapters such as "The Atmosphere: Urban History", "The Hydrosphere: Depletions, Dams and Diversions", "More People, Bigger Cities" and "Fuels, Tools and Economics" he uses tables and data and balanced and thoughtful reasoning to show that these conditions are neither static nor stable, and he effectively makes his pont. His point is not that of a Cassandra warning of an impending environmental apocalypse but something more measured. "We might then consciously choose a world that would require only irksome adaptations on our part and avoid traumatic ones." Couched in these terms his message is much more likely to be read, thought about, and most importantly acted upon. If nothing else McNeill would encourage us to act as the very process itself will "distinguish us from rats and sharks."

The two most basic and obvious descriptions of this book only highlights the poignancy of the subject of EXTINCT BIRDS. To say that the book is large (nearly 400 pages) implies that there are a lot of birds that are no longer with us. Telling you it's beautifully illustrated (which it is, with nearly every page including a painting, photograph, or sketch, many in full color) only shows that we've lost a wide variety of colorful species. The book is also thoroughly researched and well organized with a logical arrangement of the birds in their main groupings.

In the introduction Fuller mentions Jerdon's Courser and the Four-colored flowerpecker, two species previously thought extinct (the flowerpecker since 1900). Both have since been rediscovered. This illustrates one of the dramatic changes in recent times with regard to the whole subject of extinction. Rediscovery is news and extinction is big business. It long ago shrugged off it's dry and dusty, stuffed-exhibits-in-a-museum image, and is now firmly embedded in popular culture and is the subject of bestsellers and box-office hits. This is especially true for birds and dinosaurs. Fuller says as much and gives a nod to the huge role JURASSIC PARK played in this. The story of the Coelacanth is even more remarkable than the rediscovery, after 100 years, of a small flowerpecking bird in a stand of forests on the Phillipine island of Cebu. Nonetheless we'll probably have a long wait before we see a prehistoric fish starring in a movie. The Coelacanth does have its own book though. Its rediscovery in 1938 after being gone for 400 million years is the subject of Samantha Weinberg's A FISH CAUGHT IN TIME. Fuller acknowledges another recent trend which is heightening interest in extinction - the recent scientific work using DNA technology - and its hint that we may be able to restore species in the not too distant future.

As part of useful background information Fuller talks about the special role of islands in the extinction process. There is much that is known about the peculiar sensitivity of these ecosystems. There is a correlation between islands and high rates of extinct, and threatened but still extant, bird species. Fuller makes referrence to David Quammen's appropriately titled book THE SONG OF THE DODO which explores the whole subject of island biogeography. Small fragile ecosystems, loss of habitat (especially forest cover), the impact of agriculture and other man-made environments, introduced species and competition; all of these are subjects scientists are very familiar with and whose impact on bird extinction has been studied.

Where the recent popular interest in extinction becomes slightly problematic for professionals is that we all want to know what's happening, but quantifying bird extinctions and arriving at loss rates still remains an inexact science. This book covers the 85 bird species that are known to have gone extinct since 1600. There is immediately a problem with this simple statement. "Known" is very subjective and the starting year of 1600 is artificial. Fuller explains: "The year 1600 heralds a period during which relatively reliable records have accumulated; before this time the records are sparse and, where they do exist, it is usually difficult to know what to make of them." As for the difficulty of statistical methods in estimating loss rates, consider the following. For ease of calculation use the number of species lost as 80 and years at 400 (1600 to 2000). This works out to 5, which a dishonest person could report as saying that on average over the last 400 years we have been losing bird species at the rate of 5 per year! ... That works out to 2000 extinct species but we know that the correct figure is 85, so it simply means that for many years there were no extinctions. What we do know is that the rate of extinction in recent years has been increasing. The most commonly accepted bird extinction rate today is Colombia University's Center for Environmental Research and Conservations' figure of 0.01 percent or one species per year. This little exercise illustrates the statistical chicanery employed by THE SKEPTICAL ENVIRONMENTALIST with his estimate of the overall extinction rate at "0.7 percent over the next 50 years". This works out to 0.014 percent which is barely higher than the most conservative estimate for bird extinctions alone!

Statistics aside, and regardless of whether you accept that there will be an estimated 1200 more bird species extinct in the next 100 years there are a couple of things that are certain. The next edition of this book will be as beautiful as this one and depending on how soon it's published it will be bigger. How much larger and by how many species remians the sad unknown.

Three-quarters of the way through his book Wright poses that question himself, and it's not because he's confused about his own book (although some critics have said just that, and worse). It's a two part question. "Aren't organic evolution and human history sufficiently different to demand seperate treatment?" How you answer that question will determine whether or not you'll enjoy this book. This question is asked on p243. I'd suggest you begin there, read a little and then decide. If your answer to Wright is an unqualified "yes", you definitely won't enjoy the book and you'll probably find yourself in the "one star review" category. You'll have plenty of good company though as there are a few historians and evolutionary biologists who have found much here to criticize. Since this is a "five star" review I obviously feel differently. Wright goes on. "Early on, I claimed that the answer is no - that the two processes naturally constitute a single story." This is because the two processes share the same mechanisms, energy, and direction. The energy is the "interplay between zero-sum and non-zero-sum forces." Here we have the crux of his argument. In contrast to zero-sum situations where one's gain is another's loss, the NONZERO sum situation isn't quite so binary. In fact "interests overlap entirely" and cooperation is the preferred mode of operation. This results in increasing complexity (not necessarily progress) for both cultural and biological evolution and implies that history has a direction and human life has a purpose.

Wright traces this idea throughout history from stone age to our age and shows the concept at work in the development of agriculture, language, technology, even war, and in our use of information, money, and trade. There is direction and Wright sees "an arrow beginning tens of thousands years ago and continuing to the present. And looking ahead, you see where it is pointing." That's just man's history or cultural evolution. Remember this is one book not two so we should not expect Wright to shy away from seeking some pattern, direction, or purpose to human life. Most (but not all) biologists agree that natural selection occurs at the level of the individual and thus gives us a basic definition of what an organism is. Ecosytems, cultures, or societies are therefore not organisms. Wright accepts that but merely as the starting point for departure on some other journeys through the nature of awareness, sentience, designs and patterns in life, purpose and direction in evolution, information networks, global consciousness, superorganisms and God.

This is a vastly ambitious book as is any that seeks the "big picture." Any author that is brave (some may say arrogant) enough to try for the answers, I think, deserves a read. So is any book that covers works by Popper, Berlin, Kant, Mill, Marx, Tielhard de Chardin, Toynbee, Richard Dawkins, Jared Diamond, Stephen Jay Gould and E.O.Wilson. Certainly there's a lot here that is contentious and I doubt there's anybody, including Wright, who would say he's right on everything. It nevertheless is a well researched, carefully reasoned, extemely well written and thoroughly enjoyable book.

....

...and never the twain shall meet." Kipling was wrong about that. This fascinating book shows how culture and world-view influenced not just Kipling and others of the past, but continues to do so with us today. Our maps, both mental and otherwise, are largely shaped by our own realities. Indeed the authors argue we are all unwitting believers in THE MYTH OF CONTINENTS. The metageography that this book critiques is defined as "the set of spatial structures through which people order their knowledge of the world." Such structures are arbitrary, but it's not just continents. It extends to world regions, culture areas, zones, and even civilizations. Also any depiction in atlases, on globes, in texts, and on political maps. It's all extremely subjective.

One of the strengths of this book is how it shows these artificial views emerging, changing, and adjusting to the dynamism and power of cultures. The concept of the continent of Europe is directly connected to the power of that region. Why else, the authors ask, should India be a sub-continent and China only a part of Asia? "In physical, cultural and historical diversity, China and India are comparable to the entire European landmass, not to a single European country."

The book traces the origins of the continental system from Herodotus through Ptolemy, the Romans, Medieval Europe to the Age of Discovery and beyond. The whole idea of what defined a continent (large landmass seperated by water) was always very fungible. The authors say that as late as 1599 "any reasonable large body of land or even island group might be deemed a continent". They give the example of a geographer referring to the West Indies as a "large and fruitful continent". The West Indies themselves are a perfect example of perception dictating form. We know that the "Indies" part came about because Columbus thought he had arrived in the East. The metageographies of West and East then are concepts that, like continents, are open to criticism. So too are the New and Old worlds, the First and Third Worlds (was there ever a Second World?) The same vagueness surrounds the North and the South, the Occident and Orient, Far East, Middle East, South Asia and the Pacific Rim.

In offering their own system for organizing human space the authors replace continents with "world regions". Arnold Toynbee and more recently Samuel Huntinton's system of using civilizations as the organizing principle gets a nod from the authors. In the classification they use, Europe is now "Western Eurasia", "African-America" includes not just the West Indies but the entire Caribbean and North-Eastern Brazil. North America remains and Ibero-America emerges.

Obviously geographers will thoroughly enjoy this book but it has a much broader appeal. Wherever we are in the world we use some of the terms above to describe our place. If nothing else this book will make us all a little more aware of how we define ourselves and others.

Right up front Naipaul says "this book is about people. It's not a book of opinion. It's a book of stories." These are stories about people in four Islamic countries (Indonesia, Iran, Pakistan and Malaysia) that simply say: to live a life BEYOND BELIEF in the Third World means maintaining one's hopes and dreams against the daily grind of disillusionment and poverty. This disheartening experience is central to Naipaul's writing. There is always the theme of a "universal civilization" with center and periphery and the idea of the pursuit of happiness is at its center. In both his fiction and travel writing he simply believes that this is an "immense human idea" and it colors all he sees and writes about. Another theme closely linked to this is Naipaul's search for how we fill the psychological and spiritual center. Take the example of the young Iranian student who he describes as someone who "couldn't step outside himself to consider his life and motives." The same spiritual quest can be seen in the lifestories of a Malaysian playwright and a Javanese poet. The playwright's story also involves the man's father and his unfinished house. Again we are dealing with Naipauls' interests. It is no coincidence that the persons Naipaul is drawn to are writers like himself or men who worked out the center and periphery struggle of father and son. Nor is a house insignificant in the context of what it means to possess a piece of ones own sacred ground.

This book is supposedly hostile to Islam and Salman Rushdie once accused Naipaul of being a Hindu nationalist. Vituperation was stepped up a notch when Edward Said called Naipaul "an intellectual catastrophe of the first order" and said he was a "ghost". But why stop there. Naipaul has written many books with African, West Indian, Latin American, and Indian settings and some unhappy readers have called him a neocolonialist, imperialist, "brown sahib" or "hater of negroes". The truth is Islamic criticism of this book is no different than any other overly sensitive reaction. It is equally as misplaced and more importantly, misses the point of Naipaul's writing entirely.

Naipaul writes about the human condition and the struggle that is life. If we see too much of our own disillusionment and disappointment in what we read that is no fault of the writer. And lest you think he writes from an arms length away and cares nothing for his subjects, or is himself incapable of emotion, nothing could be further than the truth about his work. In talking about the same Javanese poet Naipaul says he now has "a clear knowledge - almost as to something about myself - of the pain Linus lived with, family pain, pain as a writer, pain for all the things of Java and his village which he saw being washed away." Hostile to Islam? I don't think so. Just great stories from an incomparable writer, that's all.

Samantha Power would perfectly understand why, after reading her book, it's quite likely that we will come away with a pessimistic and somewhat fatalistic view. The thrust of her book's argument is that our government and leaders, through ignorance, denial, policy vacuum, or a lack of political will, have stood idly by and allowed crimes against humanity to take place. As we read the descriptions of the massacres she uses to make her point, we may believe that as citizens we are in a better position to express moral outrage. Power cuts right through this view and disabuses us of any right to stand on the moral high ground. In her recent interview about the book in "The Atlantic" she said "isolationism is not just ideological in this country, it is the way people live their lives. [We] live lives isolated from people abroad."

There are some exceptions of course and her book chronicles the stories of some of these advocates for the people or "screamers" as she calls them. Official inaction and paralysis spans the decades. The book goes back as far as 1915 when the Turks butchered about 1 million Armenians. The Holocaust comes next and then the Khmer Rouge and Cambodia, followed by Iraq's massacre of the Kurds, Rwanda, and Bosnia. There is a wealth of research involved based on recently declassified materials and numerous interviews with eyewitnesses and survivors. She is relentless with her facts and as decades passed and genocides continued and administration after administration protested that they didn't know, Power's steady spotlight on evidence to the contrary makes a lie out of so much of what we've been told publicly. There are many reasons; from the purely political "national interests" arguments, to the more subtle explanations that affected individual policy makers. For instance, when do you enter a conflict if it's your view that it's A PROBLEM FROM HELL? Warren Christopher supposedly made this comment about Bosnia. If you apply even the most basic management principles for resolving an issue - that of first "owning" the problem - it seems that many of our policy makers failed the grade. Power makes it clear that a huge amount of denial exists.

Power offers prescriptions for policy change and recommendations for preventing genocides and they don't all involve military action. She is also very much aware of how September 11th has changed US foreign policy priorities. Nevertheless we have both the moral authority and the neccessary resources to prevent genocides and Power says that "the one lesson from the last half century is that if it's not the U.S.'s problem, it's nobody's problem." This book is a compelling argument for the truth of that statement but it's less than optimistic tone still leaves us wondering, will anything change?

Another collection of "baseball-bat-to-the-forehead" columns in a similar writing style as Moore. Both men use biting satire and their wicked wit to tell you what they think, and are unafraid in doing so. Hiaasen is even more impressive I think because his substantive job is still journalism and yet he can find humor in real people and events as easily as in fiction.

These columns are a selection from over the last 20 years of events in South Florida. You don't have to go back any further than 2 years to Elian Gonzalez and the 2000 presidential election to know that there's enough grist-for-the-mill here to fill much more than one book on these two topics alone. Nevertheless Hiaasen reins himself in and spreads his verbal darts around. Topics covered include "Mayor loco", the soon-to-be-gone Marlins, Chads (not a person, those bits of paper, remember?) Dolphins (both the team and the ones that frequently drown offshore), Race Riots, a con artist doctor and a pet-hating extortionist. That's the more exotic stuff. Then there's the normal South Florida fare of crooked politicians, stupid state officials, assorted mobsters and mafia, drugs, guns, and general mayhem and madness. As Hiaasen said in a recent interview "all the paths of slime and disreputability seem to lead here."

The man is a Florida treasure and for those of us who live through what he writes about his humor is a saving grace. Very few of us can express it the way he does so he is our voice of reason saying yes, it's PARADISE SCREWED allright, but we're still alive we can laugh about it.

If you are looking for something light that offers some tips for tasters or a cultural history on some of the exotic places that coffee is grown, or even an appropriate book for your coffee table, I suggest you look elsewhere. This book is none of that. This book is pretty narrow in focus and limits itself to discussions on the history of coffee growing and the business end of the industry. Topics covered include trading, marketing and distribution, consumption patterns, the emergence of cafe's and big coffeehouses, and the social, environmental, and political issues in both the producing and consuming nations. As with so many recently published books this one suffers from a pop-culture sounding title which is deliberately eye-catching, but misleading with its grandiose claim. These titles work best with popular science books about arcane subjects that changed the world set in stories about eccentric heroes and villains. I enjoy those books but this is a different book. This serious work is more referrence book than story. Don't get me wrong though. UNCOMMON GROUNDS: THE HISTORY OF COFFEE AND HOW IT TRANSFORMED OUR WORLD is too well written and has enough anecdotes to provide the "latte" for what could otherwise have been simply a dark and thick text-book.

One of the issues that Pendergrast focuses on is the stark social contrasts between where coffee is grown and the markets where it is consumed. As we read on it becomes very apparent that for Pendergrast, researching this book was part moral lesson. He pays special attention to issues of economic justice and makes us see some of coffee's story in this light. He says coffee "laborers earn an average of $3 a day. Most live in abject poverty without plumbing, electricity, medical care, or nutritious foods". After shipping and processing the product arrives here at market where "cosmopolitan consumers routinely pay half a day's Third World wages for a good cup of coffee." Along these same lines Pendergrast talks about a movement in the speciality coffee sector towards the idea of "fair trade" coffee which seeks - in the slogan of one of the companies - to offer "Not Just A Cup, But A Just Cup". Equal Exchange in the US and Max Havelaar Quality Mark coffee in Europe are the best known groups that say we should consider human rights issues when choosing a brand.

Equally as interesting is the topic of "bird-friendly coffee". Basically it involves a long standing debate over the merits of "shade coffee" (grown under a canopy of trees and thus bird-friendly) or "sun coffee" which is grown on open and exposed slopes. As happens with most things, the discussion ends up as a political argument with opponents of the ecological approach labelling it politically correct coffee. Perhaps that's true, or maybe as others have suggested, it's a brilliant marketing strategy for selling speciality coffee. Pendergrast doesn't say what he thinks but his presentation of a few facts gives us a hint. "Of the fifty-four million Americans who consider themselves birders, twenty-four million actually travelled in 1991 to observe their avian friends. In the process, they spent $2.5 billion - and who knows how much of that went for strong predawn coffee?"

Want to know about coffee prices? Prendergast explains. "One thing I have learned through my coffee research: One consumer's poison is another's nectar." In other words it's all relative and price is very subjective. "Then there's the psychological factor. The rarer the bean the more expensive and desirable. Hence, Hawaiian Kona and Jamaican Blue Mountain command premium prices, even though most coffee experts consider them bland in comparison to Guatemalan Antigua or Kenya AA." Of course price is a function of supply and demand and no discussion of coffee could end without referrence to the US. We are the largest market and the home of the biggest coffeehouses (Starbucks of course). The Finns however beat us cups down when it comes to per capita consumption.

I've lived in both Kenya and Jamaica and have had my fair share of their coffee and am a birder myself. The books coverage of those topics was therefore of particular interest to me. Whatever your tastes and interests and whether or not you even drink coffee, there's much to learn and even more to enjoy in this fascinating look at our favorite brew.