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mscalls's review
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
reflective
tense
medium-paced
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Suicide, and Animal cruelty
draeprice's review against another edition
3.0
More of a (well-deserved) rant than a science news book. I had a library copy and it was full of hair! Probably the reader before me pulling their hair out in a rage. The final point is that however terrible this disaster was, it doesn't compare to the danger of continuing to pump CO2 into our atmosphere with no sense of the urgent, impending catastrophe that we're making.
madeline00's review against another edition
I had to read this book for school - it was pretty good & very informative. (Didn’t rate - book very out of my comfort zone)
dreamwanderer's review
4.0
While the rest of the world watched the events of the 2010 Gulf Oil Spill play out on TV Carl Safina was there poking around in places where he wasn't wanted and asking questions that the powers that be refused answer. The first part of this book are his real time reflections and his thoughts were not sentimental nor pretty. He was angry at how BP took control of the whole Gulf Coast area telling people where they could and could not go and at the draconian ways they restricted the flow of information.
He got up close and personal to the 'real' people whose world revolved around the Gulf. He saw their anger and frustration.
He pulls no punches and did not reign in his anger. If he thought a certain Senator was a knucklehead, he called him a knucklehead. The word 'blistering' has been used in several reviews to describe his tone and the reviewers are correct. I would hate to have this man angry at me.
Then after the well is capped he turns his attention to our dependence on oil. They are common sense observations that cut through the spin.
A very good read if you want to know the 'rest of the story' of the aftermath of the explosion on the Deep Water Horizon.
He got up close and personal to the 'real' people whose world revolved around the Gulf. He saw their anger and frustration.
He pulls no punches and did not reign in his anger. If he thought a certain Senator was a knucklehead, he called him a knucklehead. The word 'blistering' has been used in several reviews to describe his tone and the reviewers are correct. I would hate to have this man angry at me.
Then after the well is capped he turns his attention to our dependence on oil. They are common sense observations that cut through the spin.
A very good read if you want to know the 'rest of the story' of the aftermath of the explosion on the Deep Water Horizon.
clarel's review
3.0
Reviewed here: http://www.learntodivetoday.co.za/blog/2012/05/21/bookshelf-a-sea-in-flames/
satyridae's review
4.0
This was a fascinating read on so many fronts. One of the most interesting things for me as a huge Safina fan, was to watch him write from a state of blinding, towering rage. This book was written in real time, with a few later comments inserted here and there. I think that writing well from a place of blistering anger is incredibly difficult, and watching Safina fulminate wildly at the beginning was both a little disconcerting and a little reassuring- he's just as human as the rest of us, for all he's arguably the greatest nature writer of our times.
The story itself is heartbreaking but ultimately not what I thought it would be. The conclusions drawn at the end are fairly magnanimous and even-handed- and the eventual thrust of the book is more about our need for and use of fossil fuels than the chain of tragedies which come about because of that need.
The other cost of the tragedy, the loss of livelihood and culture in the Gulf, is highlighted starkly throughout. The interviews with shrimpers and fishers and the supporting community members are very moving.
A couple of quotes from near the end of the book:
"The best way to respond to the Gulf disaster? Not washing oil off birds, picking up turtles, spraying dispersants, or cleaning beaches. Rather, pulling the subsidies out from under Big Petroleum. Since we pay those subsidies in our income taxes and lose sight of them, it'd be better to put them right in our gasoline and oil taxes and let ourselves be shocked at the pump by the true cost we're paying - and hurry toward better options."
"There was another time when people vehemently insisted that changing America's main source of energy would wreck the economy. The cheapest energy that ever powered America was slavery. Energy is always a moral issue."
There's a lot to learn here, and some of it will make you furious all over again. Some of it will make you think. Highly recommended.
The story itself is heartbreaking but ultimately not what I thought it would be. The conclusions drawn at the end are fairly magnanimous and even-handed- and the eventual thrust of the book is more about our need for and use of fossil fuels than the chain of tragedies which come about because of that need.
The other cost of the tragedy, the loss of livelihood and culture in the Gulf, is highlighted starkly throughout. The interviews with shrimpers and fishers and the supporting community members are very moving.
A couple of quotes from near the end of the book:
"The best way to respond to the Gulf disaster? Not washing oil off birds, picking up turtles, spraying dispersants, or cleaning beaches. Rather, pulling the subsidies out from under Big Petroleum. Since we pay those subsidies in our income taxes and lose sight of them, it'd be better to put them right in our gasoline and oil taxes and let ourselves be shocked at the pump by the true cost we're paying - and hurry toward better options."
"There was another time when people vehemently insisted that changing America's main source of energy would wreck the economy. The cheapest energy that ever powered America was slavery. Energy is always a moral issue."
There's a lot to learn here, and some of it will make you furious all over again. Some of it will make you think. Highly recommended.
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