Category: Reviews

Bog with green vegetation and blue water

Swamp Feelings

Annie Proulx’s 2022 book Fen, Bog, and Swamp is a melancholy love letter to wetland ecosystems. But missing from this lament, Nino McQuown argues, are hopeful histories of resistance.

Fountain and reflections at the Stravinsky Memorial

Where the Queer Wild Things Are

Can wildness be its own way of thinking and knowing? And where should we look to find out? Julia Dauer reviews Jack Halberstam’s wide-ranging new book, Wild Things.

Close up of concentric circles in wood

Listening to What Trees Have to Say

Trees might have a lot to say, but how can humans hear them? Solvejg Nitzke reviews Valerie Trouet’s new book, “Tree Story: The History of the World Written in Rings.”

The Quarantine Garden

Gardening is on the rise as the world quarantines during the COVID-19 pandemic. Anna Muenchrath considers the implications and opportunities of the quarantine garden in her review of The Poetics and Politics of Gardening in Hard Times.

A wooden bookcase with jars of colorful plastic objects on the shelves

Art for Our Plastic Present

Natalie Wright reviews an exhibit on “Plastic Entanglements” at the Chazen Museum of Art which explores questions of our plastic, synthetic world.

An Instagram post of a glacier, with a caption: Yesterday the #NWProject was in Pond Inlet in Nunavut, learning about the Ikaarvik program, which trains Inuit youth to participate in scientific work and encourages visiting Arctic researchers to engage with the community. Also bearded seals! Narwhals! And $58 12-packs of soda! Please note that my FB live didn’t happen (satellite issues)—communication remains very very difficult in the Arctic (this is my thesis). Photos much compressed to make it possible to post. #nsffunded #changingArctic #Arctic #Nunavut #Climatechange

The Social Media of Polar Exploration

Hester Blum’s new book, The News at the Ends of the Earth, explains why 19th-century newspapers printed on polar expeditions offer a model for communicating in the age of climate crisis.