reviews

Please, You Go First... Author:  Richard Conniff Some animals get all the love.  Pandas, dolphins, tigers and horses are loved by many for their beauty, intelligence or cuteness.   But as one wanders the great outdoors, most of the creatures encountered are much less pleasant, if not downright loathsome.  Adventure journalist Richard Conniff has spent much of his career seeking out the latter – life’s less desirables, taking obvious pleasure in the effort.  The creepier the better.  Swimming with Piranhas at Feeding Time is a 2009 compilation of 23 of his essays that proves to be informative, entertaining and often disgusting. [...]

Cool, Clear and Increasingly Scarce... Author:  Alex Prud'homme We need a lot of it for everything.  From the straightforward, like growing lettuce and taking showers to the less obvious, like mining natural gas and making computer chips, humans require vast amounts of fresh water for most of the things we do.  As our population continues to grow and modernize, we’re going to need increasing amounts in the future.  Moreover, we all think we have the right to use as much as we want.  But, the reality is that there’s only so much fresh water to go around and eventually demand [...]