The Genome Odyssey: Medical Mysteries and the Incredible Quest to Solve Them by Euan Angus Ashley

 

I have been interested in genome research since I first heard about it. As a genealogy researcher, I am curious about what we inherit from our ancestors. I seek out family resemblances and inherited traits, finding my eyes in one relative, my body type in another. 

I wonder what health issues I inherited, or did not inherit. My mother had autoimmune diseases, and so do I. My grandfather had horrible ragweed allergies, and so does our son. My father had non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, and so does my cousin. My aunt and her two children struggled with alcoholism. Two grandfathers (aged 52 and 68) and an uncle (age 34) died of heart attacks. 

For some people, their genes are secret time bombs. A healthy athlete suffers a sudden heart attack and dies. A baby's normal progress stops, and even regresses. 

What if there was a test that could warn us of impending or likely health issues so doctors could be prepared to remedy or even cure them? What if it was affordable for everyone? What if if was part of our normal preventative health care insurance?

This could be reality.

The Genome Odyssey is a fascinating narrative of Dr. Ashley's research in genome sequencing and how it was applied to solve medical mysteries. 

The science is very accessible in presentation, so that even non-medical folk like myself can understand how genes and sequencing works. The personal stories of those whose lives were changed through genome sequencing  and genetic therapy are affecting. For some, simple OTC supplements changed their life.

The author addresses the current Sars-CoV-2 pandemic, telling how the scientific community swung into action even as governments floundered, and explaining how vaccines was developed and how the different kinds work on the virus. 

"Could even more widespread use of genomics have gotten us further ahead of this pandemic to begin with?", he asks. He notes that wastewater can predict which community will have the next rise in infections. If we systematically tested wastewater the way we test drinking water, we could be prepared to prevent disease flareups.

In a capitalist, profit-driven health system, the question is who will pay. Will the rich only benefit, or those victims of rare diseases who are covered by research grants? Another issue to be addressed is the privacy of genome information and its use. Ashley adds, "Just because we can, doesn't mean we should. Nor does it mean that we can afford it."

Yet the possibilities of what doctors will be able to do in the future are endless.

I received an ARC from the publisher through Bookish First. My review is fair and unbiased.

The Genome Odyssey: Medical Mysteries and the Incredible Quest to Solve Them 
by Euan Angus Ashley, MD, PhD
Celadon Books
Publication Date: February 23, 2021

hardcover $26.99; ebook $14.99
ISBN 9781250234995

from the publisher

“This wonderful page-turner captures the excitement, peril, wonder and anticipation of the so-called “genomics” era — the era that has begun us to allow us to sequence the entirety of DNA carried within our bodies, and to understand the functions of parts of this genome. Dr Ashley, one of the pioneers of gene sequencing technologies, writes with authority, elegance and simplicity to enable an in-depth understanding of the most exciting scientific developments of our times. Every curious reader must read this book.” —Siddhartha Mukherjee, Pulitzer Prize-winning and #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Emperor of Maladies and The Gene

In The Genome Odyssey, Dr. Euan Ashley, Stanford professor of medicine and genetics, brings the breakthroughs of precision medicine to vivid life through the real diagnostic journeys of his patients and the tireless efforts of his fellow doctors and scientists as they hunt to prevent, predict, and beat disease.

Since the Human Genome Project was completed in 2003, the price of genome sequencing has dropped at a staggering rate. It’s as if the price of a Ferrari went from $350,000 to a mere forty cents. Through breakthroughs made by Dr. Ashley’s team at Stanford and other dedicated groups around the world, analyzing the human genome has decreased from a heroic multibillion dollar effort to a single clinical test costing less than $1,000.

For the first time we have within our grasp the ability to predict our genetic future, to diagnose and prevent disease before it begins, and to decode what it really means to be human.

In The Genome Odyssey, Dr. Ashley details the medicine behind genome sequencing with clarity and accessibility. More than that, with passion for his subject and compassion for his patients, he introduces readers to the dynamic group of researchers and doctor detectives who hunt for answers, and to the pioneering patients who open up their lives to the medical community during their search for diagnoses and cures.

He describes how he led the team that was the first to analyze and interpret a complete human genome, how they broke genome speed records to diagnose and treat a newborn baby girl whose heart stopped five times on the first day of her life, and how they found a boy with tumors growing inside his heart and traced the cause to a missing piece of his genome.

These patients inspire Dr. Ashley and his team as they work to expand the boundaries of our medical capabilities and to envision a future where genome sequencing is available for all, where medicine can be tailored to treat specific diseases and to decode pathogens like viruses at the genomic level, and where our medical system as we know it has been completely revolutionized.

The Great Indoors: The Surprising Science of How Buildings Shape Our Behavior, Health, and Happiness by Emily Anthes

 

I so enjoyed reading The Great Indoors. Every chapter was enlightening and interesting, the science made accessible and relevant. Emily Anthes wisely introduces readers to cutting-edge insights and ideas through a series of first person experiences of applied science.

I have been isolating in place since March 11, 2020. With very few trips into the world other than neighborhood walks; my life has been spent indoors. Our son, like millions of people, has worked from home. School closings meant our neighbor's children were educated from home. 

Anthes begins her journey at home, the "indoor jungle" of microbial and insect species that we share our space with. Of course, many of these originate in our own bodies! Our personal bacteria, and those of our pets (who introduce outdoor microbes) create a personal, unique biome that we recreate wherever we take domicile.

Next, Anthes stops at the hospital. Those bacteria we share in our home get shared in the hospital rooms, persisting even after cleaning. Sure, we have come a long way; what more can be done? Anyone who has been overnight in a hospital knows the issues: sounds and lights that prevent sleep and raise stress; the awful views of roofs or walls from the windows. Studies prove that patients recuperate quicker and better when they have private rooms with a view.

Buildings themselves lead to the health issues that send us to hospital care in the first place. Giving people ways to exercise, encouraging the use of walking and stairs can help. Starting in elementary schools. Anthes visited a school built to encourage movement and good eating choices.

Finding the balance between privacy and communal interaction is a continuing workplace challenge. Cubicles are being replaced by unassigned workstations. I remember wearing a sweater in summertime air conditioning, and short sleeves in overheated winter offices. What is the best option--working in a crowded room or isolated in a private office?

The chapter on building to accommodate all people, including the disabled and handicapped, has broadened to include people on the Autism Spectrum Disorder. Since every Autistic person has different needs, no one plant fits every need. We meet people seeking a space that allows independent living.

The history of prisons is a dark one, for even the 'improvements' were harsh. Quakers believed in reformation through isolation that allowed contemplation and repentance. The Philadelphia penitentiary  built to enforce this isolation morphed into today's solitary confinement, which has proved to exacerbate mental health issues. Anthes visits a prison that feel home-like, with direct supervision and interaction between staff and inmates, have proven successful. Of course, the real solution to mass incarceration is investing in communities and addressing the root causes of crime.

Smart devices are all the rage. Some of us already are living a Jetsons life with high-tech homes. Robot vacuums and programmable appliances are fast becoming old technology. There are mirrors that can detect cardiovascular issues based on skin color. Senior residential floors that alert staff to falls. The implications are both comforting and disconcerting!

Soon after we moved into our retirement home, our community suffered a rare flood that destroyed thousands of home basements. It took years for most to haul out the damage and make repairs, with local contractors overwhelmed with work. We were lucky; situated on a hill, and having addressed basement cracks, we stayed dry. But for millions, flooding and rising water levels is a continual threat. It is amazing to read about floating homes and how houses can be retrofitted on a budget.

Last year I read about a woman's experience of live on Mars....Well, at least life in a biodome that recreated what it would be like to live in community on Mars. Scientists are studying what kind of buildings would be needed to live on the moon or on another planet. Even IKEA has been involved.

Every part of your life is addressed in The Great Indoors. Home, health, learning, independence, and the future. 

I received a free book from the publisher through Goodreads.

The Great Indoors: The Surprising Science of How Buildings Shape Our Behavior, Health, and Happiness
by Emily Anthes
Scientific American / Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published June 23, 2020
ISBN0374166633 (ISBN13: 9780374166632)

from the publisher

Modern humans are an indoor species. We spend 90 percent of our time inside, shuttling between homes and offices, schools and stores, restaurants and gyms. And yet, in many ways, the indoor world remains unexplored territory. For all the time we spend inside buildings, we rarely stop to consider: How do these spaces affect our mental and physical well-being? Our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors? Our productivity, performance, and relationships?

In this wide-ranging, character-driven book, science journalist Emily Anthes takes us on an adventure into the buildings in which we spend our days, exploring the profound, and sometimes unexpected, ways that they shape our lives. Drawing on cutting-edge research, she probes the pain-killing power of a well-placed window and examines how the right office layout can expand our social networks. She investigates how room temperature regulates our cognitive performance, how the microbes hiding in our homes influence our immune systems, and how cafeteria design affects what—and how much—we eat.

Along the way, Anthes takes readers into an operating room designed to minimize medical errors, a school designed to boost students’ physical fitness, and a prison designed to support inmates’ psychological needs. And she previews the homes of the future, from the high-tech houses that could monitor our health to the 3D-printed structures that might allow us to live on the Moon.

The Great Indoors provides a fresh perspective on our most familiar surroundings and a new understanding of the power of architecture and design. It's an argument for thoughtful interventions into the built environment and a story about how to build a better world—one room at a time.

Superman's Not Coming: Our National Water Crisis and What We the People Can Do About It by Erin Brockovich

Erin Brockovich warns us that we the people are the only ones who can save us. Grass roots efforts by moms have stood up to power to save their children. Lois Gibbs, the Love Canal mom, and Leeann Walters of Flint, Michigan are two of the most recognized citizens who have stood up to power in defence of families. For change to happen, more ordinary people need to become involved.

Superman's Not Coming describes the problem of providing clean water under a dysfunctional EPA and climate change. Brockovich offers resources to empower Water Warrior wannabes.

I have spent a good deal of my life a few hours drive (or less) from one of the Great Lakes, the largest freshwater source in the world. I grew up boating on the Niagara River, and later vacationed at Lake Michigan, Lake Superior, and Lake Huron.

I also remember in the 1970s seeing yellow foam at the base of Niagara Falls. I remember algae blooms poisoning Toledo's water, Love Canal, and the Flint Water Crisis. I have lived near lakes made toxic by industrial waste. My state is dealing with PFAS contamination.

Across the country, Americans--today--discover their water isn't safe to drink. And they endure limits on water use because it is in short supply.

It's only going to get worse as temperatures rise.

Brockovich presents her information and argument with passion. The book is upsetting but it is also empowering. If we have the will, we can create change. It starts with people like us.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

from the publisher

From environmental activist, consumer advocate, renowned crusader, champion fighter-maverick, whose courageous case against Pacific Gas and Electric was dramatized in the Oscar-winning film--a book to inspire change that looks at our present situation with water and reveals the imminent threats to our most precious, essential element, and shows us how we can each take action to make changes in our cities, our towns, our villages, before it is too late.

In Erin Brockovich's long-awaited book--her first to reckon with conditions on our planet--she makes clear why we are in the trouble we're in, and how, in large and practical ways, we each can take actions to bring about change.

She shows us what's at stake, and writes of the fraudulent science that disguises these issues, along with cancer clusters not being reported. She writes of the saga of PG&E that continues to this day, and of the communities and people she has worked with who have helped to make an impact. She writes of the water operator in Poughkeepsie, New York, who responded to his customers' concerns and changed his system to create some of the safest water in the country; of the moms in Hannibal, Missouri, who became the first citizens in the nation to file an ordinance prohibiting the use of ammonia in their public drinking water; and about how we can protect our right to clean water by fighting for better enforcement of the laws, new legislation, and better regulations. She cannot fight all battles for all people and gives us the tools to take actions ourselves, have our voices be heard, and know that steps are being taken to make sure our water is safe to drink and use.

Superman's Not Coming: Our National Water Crisis and What We the People Can Do About It
by Erin Brockovich
Pantheon/Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Pub Date: August 25, 2020
ISBN: 9781524746964
hardcover $28.95 (USD)

Once Upon a Time I Lived on Mars: Space, Exploration, and Life on Earth by Kate Greene

Kate Greene was one of six people who spent four months living in a geodesic dome in Mauna Loa, Hawaii, simulating a Martian environment. The 'almost' astronauts were human guinea pigs in the Hi-SEAS project focused on the domestic challenges of privacy, food, and shared resources in space.

This book is the result of Greene's struggle to find a way to talk about those months and how they changed her.

Greene travels across a broad range of philosophical questions that arose from her experience, discussing food, finding a balance between solitude and sociability, boredom, and isolation, applying her insights to daily life.

I appreciated her thoughts on the privatization of space technology and the lack of oversight in the data collection and use of social media by tech companies, influencing users without their knowledge or consent.

The Space Race arose from a quest for military and political dominance. Greene asks, is it possible for space exploration to transcend "nationalist pride, capitalist power, and ordinary ego?"

"I've come up with more questions than answers," Greene writes.

Entertaining and informing.

I received a free egalley from the publisher in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Once Upon a Time I Lived on Mars: Space, Exploration, and Life on Earth
by Kate Greene
St. Martin's Press
Pub Date July 14, 2020
ISBN:9781250159472
hardcover $27.99 (USD)

from the publisher

When it comes to Mars, the focus is often on how to get there: the rockets, the engines, the fuel. But upon arrival, what will it actually be like?

In 2013, Kate Greene moved to Mars. That is, along with five fellow crew members, she embarked on NASA’s first HI-SEAS mission, a simulated Martian environment located on the slopes of Mauna Loa in Hawai'i. For four months she lived, worked, and slept in an isolated geodesic dome, conducting a sleep study on her crew mates and gaining incredible insight into human behavior in tight quarters, as well as the nature of boredom, dreams, and isolation that arise amidst the promise of scientific progress and glory.

In Once Upon a Time I Lived on Mars, Greene draws on her experience to contemplate humanity’s broader impulse to explore. The result is a twined story of space and life, of the standard, able-bodied astronaut and Greene’s brother’s disability, of the lag time of interplanetary correspondences and the challenges of a long-distance marriage, of freeze-dried egg powder and fresh pineapple, of departure and return.

By asking what kind of wisdom humanity might take to Mars and elsewhere in the Universe, Greene has written a remarkable, wide-ranging examination of our time in space right now, as a pre-Mars species, poised on the edge, readying for launch.

The Next Great Migration: The Beauty and Terror of Life on the Move by Sonia Shah

Our teenage son volunteered at a local nature center every summer. One of the activities the counselors in training participated in was pulling up Purple Loosestrife. It is an considered invasive species that thrives along Michigan's lakesides.

So, I was shocked to read that Canadian researchers concluded "there is certainly no evidence that purple loosestrife 'kills wetlands' or 'creates biological deserts'!"

Investigative journalist Sonia Shah's book The Next Great Migration is filled with such iconoclastic insights, smashing prevalent notions contending that ecosystems were meant to be unchanging, pristine, and unadulterated.

Instead, she systematically argues that no place on Earth has remained untouched by the migration of species. Including human migration.

Shah takes readers through the entire history of the migration of species and the ideas humans have held about migration. Bad science and ingrained beliefs have lead to false assumptions that impact the political landscape to this very day. Most disturbing is the rise of Eugenics and categorization of human groups to justify our fearful reaction to newcomers.

Building walls, Shah contends, cannot stop or solve the reality of migrating human populations. She writes, "Over the long history of life on earth, its (migrations) benefits have outweighed its costs." Embracing migrants can be a solution to the problems we face.

Shah's book was an engrossing read that shed light on how we 'got to here'.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

from the publisher: 

A prize-winning journalist upends our centuries-long assumptions about migration through science, history, and reporting--predicting its lifesaving power in the face of climate change. 

The news today is full of stories of dislocated people on the move. Wild species, too, are escaping warming seas and desiccated lands, creeping, swimming, and flying in a mass exodus from their past habitats. News media presents this scrambling of the planet's migration patterns as unprecedented, provoking fears of the spread of disease and conflict and waves of anxiety across the Western world. On both sides of the Atlantic, experts issue alarmed predictions of millions of invading aliens, unstoppable as an advancing tsunami, and countries respond by electing anti-immigration leaders who slam closed borders that were historically porous. 

But the science and history of migration in animals, plants, and humans tell a different story. Far from being a disruptive behavior to be quelled at any cost, migration is an ancient and lifesaving response to environmental change, a biological imperative as necessary as breathing. Climate changes triggered the first human migrations out of Africa. Falling sea levels allowed our passage across the Bering Sea. Unhampered by barbed wire, migration allowed our ancestors to people the planet, catapulting us into the highest reaches of the Himalayan mountains and the most remote islands of the Pacific, creating and disseminating the biological, cultural, and social diversity that ecosystems and societies depend upon. In other words, migration is not the crisis--it is the solution. 

Conclusively tracking the history of misinformation from the 18th century through today's anti-immigration policies, The Next Great Migration makes the case for a future in which migration is not a source of fear, but of hope.

The Next Great Migration: The Beauty and Terror of Life on the Move
by Sonia Shah
Bloomsbury Publishing
Pub Date June 2, 2020 
ISBN: 9781635571974
hardcover $28.00 (USD)

The Story of Jane Goodall by Susan B.Katz

Growing up, when I was bored I would delve into my father's National Geographic collection. He built a long shelf in the basement with the magazines ordered by year and month. I was fascinated by the stories of Jane Goodall and her chimpanzees that used tools. I remember when she married her photographer and I remember their son, Grub.

Now, young people of today can learn about Goodall's life and contributions through The Story of Jane Goodall by Susan B. Katz.

Children will relate to Jane the animal-loving child and be inspired by her courageous choice to be the first to observe chimpanzees in the wild.

Timelines, a glossary, maps, and quiz and challenges aid the learning process.

For sixty years, Goodall has studied and protect the chimps and is now an activist to protect their vanishing habitat. 

I loved to read biographies as a child, especially of women who impacted the world. Katz has also written books in this series on Frida Kahlo and Ruth Bader Ginsberg.

I was given a free book through Callisto Publishing in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

The Story of Jane Goodall: A Biography Book for New Readers
by Susan B. Katz
Rockridge Press
May 19, 2020
$6.99 paperback
ISBN: 9781646118731

The Story of More by Hope Jahren

Having hope requires courage.~from The Story of More by Hope Jahren

Succinct, well organized, and with a powerful narrative that is engrossing and accessible, The Story of More crunches down what I have read in numerous books into 224 pages.

Author Hope Jahren, author of the best-selling memoir Lab Girl, based the book on her climate change classes.

"All of this has convinced me that it's time to bring global change out of my classroom and into this book," Jahren writes in the introduction. "So if you'll listen, I'll tell you what happened to my world, to your world--to our world. It changed."

She starts at the very beginning--the fact that humans are on this earth and that our population is continually growing. Following a logical narrative, Jahren covers how we get our food and our growing energy use and the changes we have wrought on earth.

Along the way she points out that we have enough of everything but it is not shared equitably. Millions live without enough food, clean water and other things some of us take for granted. And millions of us spend money on things we don't need, wasting the clean water and energy available.

Scientists have been aware for nearly my entire lifetime that our dependence on fossil fuels was a problem. We have seen the environmental damage caused by human activity, including factory farms and our dependence on gasoline fueled cars and air travel. We know that the sea level is rising  and glaciers and the polar ice caps are melting.

Jahren concludes with actions we can all take.

First, we must determine our personal values. Learn what you can about what you value. Are your personal activities in line with those values? What about your personal investments--are they in line with your values? How we spend our money and how we invest our money should reflect what we believe. Share your values with institutions to pressure change.

Americans can make a huge impact. Every step we take to limit our energy use and reduce our consumption makes an impact. We can't give up. We can do with less.

Do not be seduced by lazy nihilism.~ from The Story of More  by Hope Jahren

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Read an excerpt or hear an audio excerpt at
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/575671/the-story-of-more-by-hope-jahren/

from the publisher

Hope Jahren is an award-winning scientist, a brilliant writer, a passionate teacher, and one of the seven billion people with whom we share this earth. In The Story of More, she illuminates the link between human habits and our imperiled planet. In concise, highly readable chapters, she takes us through the science behind the key inventions—from electric power to large-scale farming to automobiles—that, even as they help us, release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere like never before. She explains the current and projected consequences of global warming—from superstorms to rising sea levels—and the actions that we all can take to fight back. At once an explainer on the mechanisms of global change and a lively, personal narrative given to us in Jahren’s inimitable voice, The Story of More is the essential pocket primer on climate change that will leave an indelible impact on everyone who reads it.

The Story of More: How We Got to Climate Change and Where to Go from Here
by Hope Jahren
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Pub Date March 3, 2020
ISBN: 9780525563389
$15.00 (USD) hardcover

Morality and the Environmental Crisis by Roger S. Gottlieb

Deeply thoughtful and reasoned, Morality and the Environmental Crisis by Roger S. Gottlieb is a profound work that draws from all areas of human thought and experience.

Gottlieb proposes an argument then offers the counterarguments in a complex ladder of understanding that is nevertheless so well presented that the reader can follow the progression of thought.

Some years ago I participated in a small group study on energy use and climate change. The participants were all of a like mind and voiced frustration with 'those people' who remained unresponsive to arguments to change their lifestyle. The antagonism and anger weighed heavy in the air.

We cannot change the world or even change all the people around us.

We can only do what we can do. I have used tote bags for shopping for years. I have decided to make bags for produce instead of using the plastic ones at the stores. I have recycled glass and cans and paper for forty-seven years. I rarely buy red meat. When we turned in our leased car we had clocked only 10,000 miles over three years. We insulated our house and bought all LED bulbs. We compost and avoid pesticides.

It isn't enough.

We support candidates that work to save the Great Lakes and who are concerned with climate change.

It isn't enough.

As Gottlieb writes, we are still complicit--I am still complicit.

I buy yards of cotton fabric to make quilts as a creative outlet--cotton that requires fertilizers and pesticides and factories to make it into fabric and chemicals to treat it and trucks to get it to the quilt shop. Just so I can cut it up and sew it into something new, tossing the bitty scraps into the trash that goes into a landfill.

I am part of the problem. We all are. Our entire society, economy, and culture make us so. As a society, we are more interested in technology than nature. Jobs instead of preservation. Maintaining our lifestyle than worrying about oil spills somewhere else.

We need widespread collective and political action to change society. Maybe it can happen--we got a man on the moon and people sacrificed to support the war effort during WWII. Nothing less can alter the course we are headed on.

I continue to do what I can because it feels like a moral imperative, like not leaving untended fires in the forest or tossing trash along the roadside, a habit based in reason and science and tradition and personal values.

Do we love nature enough--know nature personally enough to care to preserve it? Not just the puppy mill dogs and the lab rabbits, but also the forests and the marshlands?

How can we save the natural world from our collective brutality if we do not love it? If we do not know it, how can we love it? and if everything else--work, ease, moral limits, the dominant institutions of our society--removes us from it? from Morality and the Environmental Crisis

Gottlieb ends the book by employing the ageless use of story to show the choice we each must make: we can embrace despair or gratitude. Gratitude does not negate despair, it makes life worth living in the face of awful realities.

Learn more about the book and author and see the table of contents at
https://www.kriso.ee/cambridge-studies-religion-philosophy-society-morality-db-9781316506127.html

I was given access to a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Morality and the Environmental Crisis
by Roger S. Gottlieb
Cambridge University Press
Pub Date 02 Apr 2019 
ISBN 9781316506127
PRICE $29.99 (USD)

Tesla: Inventor of the Modern by Richard Munson

Nikola Tesla has become a Culture Icon known more for his reputation as a kind of magician and rogue inventor, thanks to the movie The Prestige, and as a visionary, his name recognized because of Tesla Motors. And yet few of us understand that everything we take for granted today--the electric grid, cell phones, satellite television, the Internet, the smartwatch, and even the remote control of warfare--first sprung from his imagination.

I knew Tesla from bits and pieces. I remember when my son and husband bantered about things looking like a 'Tesla coil,' a reference to a weapon in Command and Conquer Red Alert. The 2006 movie The Prestige showed Tesla's Colorado laboratory and work in remote transmission of electricity.
In 2016 I read The Last Days of Night by Graham Moore, an exciting historical novel about the rivalry between George Westinghouse and Thomas Edison, with Tesla in the center. In The Devil in the White City by Eric Larson and The Electrifying Fall of Rainbow City by Margaret Creighton I learned about the Chicago and Buffalo fairs lit by Tesla and George Westinghouse.

And then, in my mailbox, I found a gift from W. W. Norton-- a copy of Richard Munson's biography Tesla: Inventor of the Modern. I was pleased to have all these bits and pieces of knowledge integrated into an understanding and appreciation of Tesla's life and work and legacy.

The more I learned about the man, the less I felt I 'knew' him. He was brilliant and flawed and complicated and chimerical. He worked out entire inventions in his mind before he built them. He was impeccably dressed and amazingly fit-- and a charming germaphobe who could not be touched. His obsessive-compulsive disorder ruled his habits and he fought depression with self-administered electroshock therapy. He was a lousy businessman who signed away his rights to millions and later, deep in debt, lost his research facilities. He could be vain and he could be magnanimous. He was addicted to the pure science of discovery.

"The War of the Currents" refers to the rivalry between inventors vying for precedence. Thomas Edison clung to direct current, which could not be transmitted over long distances and relegated electric power to the rich few. Tesla invented alternating current capable of powering whole regions. With George Westinghouse using Tesla's inventions, in 1893 they created the City of Lights at the Chicago Columbian Expedition.

The commission to harness the power of Niagara Falls attracted worldwide attention. Westinghouse and Tesla won the contract and in 1896 the hydroelectric power plant at Niagara Falls was opened, powering the Rainbow City at the 1901 Pan-American Expedition in Buffalo, NY. Tesla saw the feat as signifying "the subjugation of natural forces to the service of man" that would "relieve millions from want and suffering."

The Electric Tower at the 1901 Pan-American Exposition
at Buffalo, NY. 1901 Pan-American Redwork quilt detail.
In the collection of Nancy A. Bekofske

The Electricity Building at the 1901 Pan-American Exposition.
1901 Pan-American Redwork quilt detail.
In the collection of Nancy A. Bekofske

Tesla had reached superstar status, but already he was envisioning the next big idea.

At the turn of the century, gas lamps still reigned, with only 8% of American homes wired for electricity. The question remained to be answered:"Was electricity for all or for the wealthy? Would power become a necessity or remain a luxury?" Tesla was obsessed with the idea of using the earth for the transference of wireless electric power.

He went on to invent remote control and multichannel broadcasting systems. Tesla had little interest in creating and marketing useful devices based on his discoveries. He rejected an offer to develop wireless communication for the US Lighthouse Board and other projects which would have financed his research.

Next up, he built a research center in Colorado, portrayed in the movie The Prestige in which David Bowie plays Tesla in Colorado puttering around with wireless energy. His last facility on Long Island, NY went far over budget. Tesla was broke. He lost backers who wanted practical applications, something they could make money on, and Tesla was only interested in pure research. It was heartbreaking to read about Tesla's untethered last years, his increasing eccentricities in behavior, and poverty as he watched other smake millions on his ideas and inventions.

Munson offers Tesla as a role model, writing, "...we have great need today of Tesla's example of selfless out-of-the-box thinking if we are to tackle our twenty-first-century challenges...particularly in the electric-power industry he helped create." Munson continues, "he would lead a charge for sustainability and against the carbon pollution that is changing our climate." Tesla knew that coal was a limited supply and imagined harnessing energy from the sun and geothermal energy.

In short, Tesla was one of the most interesting and remarkable men I have read about. I appreciate that Munson's explanations of Tesla's discoveries and inventions were written so the general reader could grasp them.

1901 Pan-Amerian Redwork quilt detail. Dreamland.

Tesla: Inventor of the Modern
by Richard Munson
W. W. Norton & Co.
Hardcover $26.95
May 2018
ISBN 978-0-393-63544-7

American Wolf: A True Story of Survival and Obsession in the West

For National Wolf Awareness Week I read American Wolf by Nate Blakeslee. It is the story of the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park and the battle between state and Federal agencies over wolf hunting. By telling the story of one wolf, O-6, Blakeslee engages the reader's heart and mind while revealing the complicated political process that determines American law that is too often independent of informed knowledge.

O-6 became a favorite of wolf watchers and her life is well documented. Blakeslee introduces readers to National Park Service employee Rick McIntyre who every day watched and recorded the activities of the wolves. And we meet those who rely on elk hunting for income or food or sport and who hate the wolves.

The hunters believe that wolves decimate elk herds and that banning any hunting leads to ending all hunting, therefore the end of any need for guns, therefore the banning of guns. In other words, they are fighting for their way of life. States arbitrarily determined how many wolves could be taken and how many were 'needed', totally unbased on any scientific understanding.

While one Federal agency reintroduced wolves into the Yellowstone ecosystem, another leased land contiguous to the park for ranchers to graze their livestock. Wolves don't understand imaginary boundaries and often their territory went into non-park land where they could be hunted. When packs are decimated and weak they take easy prey, which include the grazing livestock. The ranchers are then reimbursed for their losses. It is a vicious cycle that makes no logical sense.

I was appalled whle learning how Washington politics impacted the Yellowstone wolves. Congress overruled the court regarding the hunting of wolves. It had cost $117 million  to restore wolves to the ecosystem. The results were dramatic; flora and fauna flourished as the environment returned to its natural state. Fewer elk ended overgrazing and brought a flourishing of fauna that brought back the beaver and rodents and consquently raptors. Yet no fewer elk were taken in the hunt, it just was not easy to find them. Legalizing hunting adjacent to the park land was like throwing that money and environmental stability to the wind.

Toward the end of the book, Rick realizes that wolf 21 had returned to die where his pack had once ruled. It puzzled him until he recalled the story of Hachiko, the Japanese Akita who had always waited at the train station for his owner, and after the owner's death had continued to come every day for nine years. 21 was waiting for his mate.

"Can a wolf in the wild experience what we know as joy and happiness?  Rick said, his voice breaking noticeably. "And my answer is yes."

Blakeslee's book is a wonderful study both of the wolves and the complicated human reaction to wolves.

I received a free book through Blogging for Books in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

See photos of O-6 at Shumway Photography at http://www.shumwayphotography.com/Yellowstone/Wolf-06/

*****

Reading about the death of O-6 was sad because two days previous we let go of our last Shiba Inu. The Shiba is an ancient breed and according to DNA research is closest to the wolf.  Kamikaze had spent seven years as a puppy mill breeder before we adopted her through a rescue shelter. She was only 14 but had multiple health issues, some the results of bad breeding or early living condition. We lost our Suki, another puppy mill breeder rescue, at age 15 in June. Kamikaze had gone down hill significantly after Suki's loss. Both dogs were blind and spent their time cuddled together, drinking from the same bowl at the same time, and going in and out together.

As a girl I loved reading animal stories, especially Ernest Thompson Seton's Wild Animals I Have Known. Yes, I loved those Disney nature films. I was nine years old when my grandfather took me to see his hometown and the 'last of the Lobo wolves'. The creatures in their small pens looked like large, gentle dogs, not the killers that had been hunted into extinction. Here is my empehmera of the Last of the Lobo Wolves, Milroy, PA

The Last of the Lobo Wolves postcards circa 1963

The Death and Life of the Great Lakes by Dan Egan

Dan Egan's book The Death and Life of the Great Lakes was distressing to read. I know these lakes. I have lived near the Great Lakes for almost 50 years. I grew up along the Niagara River and have lived 40 years in Michigan--including seven years living near Lake Michigan, three years so close I heard the sound of the waves day and night.

I have seen the lakes die and become reborn and die again. I remember in the 1970s when the water at the base of Niagara Falls foamed with brown-yellow froth from pollution. I remember when shallow Lake Erie was declared dead; the wonder of its rebirth; now its waters have become poisonous.

We have wrecked havoc with the beautiful and perfect ecosystem. We have made decisions based on capital gain, without foresight or thought about our actions' impact on the natural balance. We have altered the landscape to serve our need, heedless of the consequences.

We dug canals, opened the Lakes to world-wide shipping, dumped industrial and agricultural waste into their waters. Non-native species, by accident or intent, were brought in and allowed to become established and alter the ecosystem.

And in the big picture we have contributed to a climate change that threatens the Lakes as their waters remain warm and ice free in winter, promoting evaporation and lowering lake levels.

Lake Superior shipwreck of Gale Staples
 near Hurricane River and Au Sable Lighthouse

My husband and son camped in the Upper Peninsula in the late 1990s and early 2000s. They knew the lake levels were dropping. The shipwrecks along the Superior coast between the Hurricane River campground and the Au Sable lighthouse were more exposed every year. The Sitka had been underwater when they first saw it. The next year it was exposed. The cold waters of Lake Superior preserves the shipwrecks; exposure will speed their decay.

*****

Egan's book explains how we got to 'here': a Lake Michigan so devoid of life you can see deep into its waters; a Lake Erie covered in poisonous algae that makes the water undrinkable; lake levels dropping, evaporation increasing. And the whole country itching to get a share of the water. Canada's decisions also impact what happened, or does not happen, to the lakes. Had they closed the 'front door' to allow foreign ships direct access into the Lakes the introduction of alien species would have been stemmed.

The Lakes were a 'closed system', an ecosystem developed and perfected in isolation since the glacial melt created them at the end of the last ice age. In "The Front Door" section Egan explains how the St. Lawrence Seaway, the Welland Canal, and even the Erie Canal opened the door to non-native species. The native Lake Trout were killed off by Sea Lampreys. Alewives found their way into the lakes and flourished, replacing native species, Coho and Chinook Salmon were brought in to feed off the Alewives. The Salmon were chosen over restocking native fish because sportsmen preferred them. For a time the Winter Water Wonderland of Michigan offered some of the best fishing around. Then--the Salmon ate all the Alewives and were left starving.

The next wave of invaders were the Zebra and Quagga Mussels. Inedible to native fish, they flourished in the lakes and quickly covered everything. Literally. Including the inflow pipes that provided drinking water and water for industry. The costs for controlling the mussels is mind boggling.

The second part of the book, "The Back Door," tells how Asian Carp are waiting in the Chicago Canal System to invade Lake Michigan; how mussels were carried from the Great Lakes to invade pristine Western Lakes; and addresses the Toledo Water Crisis, created when the Black Swamp was drained and turned into the lush farmland whose fertilizers are carried into the lake to feed the algae.

In Part Three, "The Future," Egan explains how climate change, the bottling of lake water, and the diversion of the water to 'dry' states will impact the future of the Lakes.

The final chapter addresses ways to move into a sustainable future for the Great Lakes.

My son at Lake Superior near the shipwreck Gale Staples

America already is facing a water crisis as glacial ground water is used up and changing weather patterns bring drought. It is urgent that we address how to protect our most important resource--the Lakes, which comprise 20% of the world's fresh water--before it is truly too late.

Egan's book lays out the history and the problems we have wrought in the past. Can we--will we--preserve and restore the Great Lakes? Our new presidential administration with its ties to business is unfriendly to science. The plan to gut the EPA and defund programs to protect out water will have devastating consequences to our most precious natural resource.

I received an ARC from the publisher in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

The Death and Life of the Great Lakes
Dan Egan
W. W. Norton & Company
Publication March 7, 2017
$27.95 hard cover
ISBN: 978-0-393-24643-8

My Dad boating on Lake St, Clair, Michigan, about 1966

Me, on the Niagara River, about 1956

Lab Girl by Hope Jahren: Survive and Thrive

Reading the beginning of Lab Girl by Hope Jahren through The First Look Book Club I was charmed by Jahren's voice and put the book on my 'to read' list. When I saw it on the new book shelf at the library I brought it home with me.

"Each beginning is the end of a waiting. We are each given exactly one chance to be. Each of us is both impossible and inevitable. Every replete tree was first a seed that waited."

Jahren has faced many challenges: a lonely childhood, working herself through school, struggling as a female scientist against the prejudices of a male dominated field, finding funding for her projects. Her success can be verified by her choice as one of Time's 100 Most Influential People, her Fulbright Scholarships, and her long relationship with her lab partner Bill. She found love and faced a difficult pregnancy sans medication for her bipolar disorder to have the child that changed her life.

"I have learned that raising a child is essentially one long, slow agony of letting go."

Jahren's writing is so lovely to read. Her love of her work as a geobioloist and her awe of nature shines through the pages. She alternates chapters on her life with chapters about the world of green growing things around us.

The self-portrait Jahren paints reveals her personal challenges and insecurities without being confessional and raw. Her lab partner/best friend/soul mate Bill is interesting and complicated, eccentric and brilliant. He once lived in a hole in his parent's back yard. We come to love him as much as Jahren does. We are happy when her loneliness is ended by marrying a man who 'gets her.'

To read a section of the book go to http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/248239/lab-girl-by-hope-jahren/9781101874936/

To read an interview with Jahren go to http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/the-secret-life-of-plants-and-lab-girl-author-hope-jahren/

A gorgeous book of life. Jahren contains multitudes. Her book is love as life. Trees as truth.” —Beth Kephart, Chicago Tribune

Lab Girl
Hope Jahren
Penguin Random House
$26.95 hard cover
ISBN:9781101874936