TITLE:  Making Eden: How Plants Transformed a Barren Planet

 

AUTHOR:  David Beerling

 

DATE PUBLISHED: 2019

 

FORMAT:  Hardcover

 

ISBN-13:  978019879830

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DESCRIPTION:

"Over 7 billion people depend on plants for healthy, productive, secure lives, but few of us stop to consider the origin of the plant kingdom that turned the world green and made our lives possible. And as the human population continues to escalate, our survival depends on how we treat the plant kingdom and the soils that sustain it. Understanding the evolutionary history of our land floras, the story of how plant life emerged from water and conquered the continents to dominate the planet, is fundamental to our own existence.

In Making Eden David Beerling reveals the hidden history of Earth's sun-shot greenery, and considers its future prospects as we farm the planet to feed the world. Describing the early plant pioneers and their close, symbiotic relationship with fungi, he examines the central role plants play in both ecosystems and the regulation of climate. As threats to plant biodiversity mount today, Beerling discusses the resultant implications for food security and climate change, and how these can be avoided. Drawing on the latest exciting scientific findings, including Beerling's own field work in the UK, North America, and New Zealand, and his experimental research programmes over the past decade, this is an exciting new take on how plants greened the continents."

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REVIEW:

 

This is a fairly comprehensive survey of what we know about plant evolution - when plants first started growing on land, when leaves, stomata, roots, seeds, and flowers first developed.  Beerling also shows that without plants, Earth would not be the Eden that it is today.  Interesting, but some may find the genomic aspects too technical.  This book is something of a prequel to Beerling's previous book:  The Emerald Planet: How Plants Changed Earth's History.

 

 

 

I am not the intended audience for this book; I read it looking for something set in Papau New Guinea from which I would learn a bit about the country and its people, while the book seems intended for assignment in undergraduate anthropology classes as a supplementary textbook. It did fulfill my goal of learning about the lives of the Gebusi, a small tribe living in the rainforest of Papau New Guinea’s huge Western Province. On the other hand, it’s a shame that academic texts aren’t written or edited with the goal of satisfying the reader; the author’s goal seems to be more about teaching students about anthropology and the realities of ethnographic work than answering the reader’s curiosity. In other words, the gulf between this and popular ethnographies like $2.00 a Day or City of Thorns is huge.

Knauft is an anthropologist who initially lived with the Gebusi for two years, from 1980 to 1982, accompanied by his wife Eileen (whether she is also an anthropologist is unclear; though he discusses his feelings about developments among the Gebusi and relationships with individuals among them, this is definitely not a memoir). Despite sporadic contact with Australian officers, during the time that they colonized the country, the Gebusi at the time retained a very traditional culture, including a tradition of spirit mediumship, all-night dances and séances, and elaborate initiation rituals for young men. They were easily able to provide for their material needs with crops that require little effort in cultivation, and enjoyed leisure time and “good company,” along with a cultural flourishing that resulted from the Australians' subduing a nearby tribe with a habit of raiding their longhouses and massacring their people. But it wasn't an ideal life: while they had enough to eat, nutrition was poor, illness rife and few people made it to the age of 40; the society was patriarchal and women excluded from many aspects of it; and execution for sorcery was rampant. The Gebusi believed that all deaths were caused by humans, so deaths by sickness or accident led to sorcery inquests and often more death. Nevertheless, they weren’t the stereotype of a cannibalistic rainforest people (though there is cannibalism in their past): due process was important, including a waiting period after the death and finding a neutral spirit medium to preside over the inquest.

After his initial stay, Knauft returned to the Gebusi in 1998, at which point their culture was transformed: many had moved to a nearby town with an airstrip and government services. They converted to various forms of Christianity, sent their children to school, and gave up sorcery inquests and executions entirely. Men’s leisure time now revolved around local soccer leagues, while women sold produce (usually with little success) in the local market. The several tribes inhabiting the town mocked their own traditional cultures in Independence Day celebrations, and Gebusi practices such as dancing and initiation rites seemed to be dying out as young people attempted to embrace the modern world.

But then in 2008, everything had changed again: loss of funding meant government services had largely vanished, and the Gebusi were reviving their traditional culture, including building longhouses and conducting initiation rites; as they retained their land and ability to sustain themselves, they didn’t seem to miss the government or markets much. But spirit mediumship had died out, so that despite lingering suspicions of sorcery they were no longer able to conduct inquests, and many of the Gebusi continued to attend Christian services.

It is fascinating material, and the author seems to have made personal friends with many of the Gebusi and to respect them and their culture. He is aware of his own fallibility and works to distinguish unique incidents from those typical of the culture. And he spends enough time with Gebusi to get to know them and to be able to tell stories in context about incidents that occur in the community.

However, for all the author’s talk about how this is intended to be less formal and more personal than typical academic writing, and for all that the writing is clearer and more engaging than in most textbooks, the content is still basically that of a textbook. Sometimes its information is incomplete, as if the author has made his point and is ready to move on, regardless of whether readers have more questions. For instance, for all that Knauft mentions sorcery executions frequently, I still don’t know how most of these deaths occurred. Both in the book and on his website (which for some reason includes entire stories in pictures that aren’t in the book but deserved to be), he describes instances in which the accused is killed in the forest by a relative of the deceased, which the community accepts because of the “spiritual evidence” against the accused. How common is this, as opposed to public or formal executions? Is everyone given the opportunity to exonerate themselves via trial by cooking, or only some people? In one case described, the sorcerer purportedly comes from another village and the searchers lose the trail; is this unusual, or common?

In other cases, it can be vague in a way typical of academic writing, obscuring specifics behind general language. For instance, a boy and later young man with whom the author is close leaves his community due to “a dispute” and travels to the nearest city, where he works for two years. This is after he and his younger brother are orphaned when he’s about 12. Who raised the boys after that, and what was the dispute? These are human interest questions, but their answers also speak to Gebusi culture. And despite telling us about their terrible life expectancy in the early 80s, the author has nothing to say about how having and then losing a local medical clinic affected the Gebusi. Their lifespans are still much shorter than Americans’, but were there improvements?

And bizarrely, he mentions only on his aforementioned website, in a caption to a longhouse diagram, that rigidly separate sleeping areas for men and women mean that sexual relations happened in the rainforest rather than in bed. Doesn't this deserve to be in the book, rather than only the "alternative sexual practices" (i.e. adolescent boys giving blowjobs because swallowing semen was supposed to help them become men)? But in the book he does mention a couple caught having an illicit affair in a house, so maybe the rainforest sex only applies to those few families who actually live in the longhouse? Knauft isn't too shy to include a scene of a young man propositioning him, so why isn't this in the book?

Overall, I learned from this book, but I think it would be a little off-base for most non-academic readers (the “Broader Connections” bullet point summaries of key ideas in anthropology at the end of each chapter, with much bolded text, are definitely eyeroll-worthy). While it’s not as short as the page count would have it – there’s a lot of text on each page – it was worth my time.

Transformed POTUS by Suzanne Falter
Charley is getting married to Electra and he can't believe he is so lucky to have found her.
They are in Las Vegas and he works as a protector for the President.
She is a new agent and knows how to drive the car defensively. She works at the farm in VA so it's a bit difficult for them to get together.
President is just a kid and lives with his mother at the White House. The biscuit is crucial. It holds codes that deal with nuclear things.
Charley has to also find girls for the president after they are interrogated...
Story is also following Electra as she gambles and wins big...
Lots of secrets and they come at you from all angles as people know one another from their previous lifes. Everything and ten some of things you can just about imagine: mafia, drugs, prostitutes, trans gender relations, homosexual relations...It's all so believable also.
Received this review copy from the author and this is my honest review.

 

One to Five: One Shortcut Recipe Transfo...



This was a very cool little recipe book. Enjoyable to read and easy to follow. Filled with suggestions of items to keep in your freezer or pantry and with several ideas in ways to use them. There is also a section with essential kitchen tools and items to keep on hand (tinfoil, parchment paper etc.)



The concept was simple. On one page there would be a main ingredient (eggs, biscuit dough, veggies, meats, seafood etc) followed by five ways in which to use it. There is also a little "EXTRA CREDIT" bit at the end of each recipe with an idea or two on what to serve with the recipe. The recipes were simple to follow and the photos added a nice yummy touch.

Some recipes on my list to try..

FORK-AND-KNIFE SLOPPY JOES
CHEESE EGG ROLLS
SCOTT STREET TACOS (CARNITAS)
ELVIS PANCAKES
12-LAYER SUPER NACHOS
MANGO-SHRIMP LETTUCE CUPS
PUMPKIN CHURROS
HIDDEN SECRETS CANDY BAR BARS

Overall a great little cookbook to add to your cooking arsenal.

“I know your heart. You may be something of an enemy, but I do know your heart.” (Loc. 3841)

 

Sometimes my reading life gets stuck in a rut, and I begin to feel like a hamster perpetually going nowhere in one of those crazy running wheels. I have an alarming addiction to historical romance and without intervention I'd read nothing else. But, like a diet with only one food, that's not healthy. In fact, it can be limiting and eventually downright boring. So I consciously keep an ear to the ground for books buzzing in other sub-genres to mix things up a bit. In this case my "ear to the ground" was "A Guest Pandora's Box" post by Dabney, Elisabeth Lane and Alexis Hall at All About Romance discussing Carolyn Crane's Against The Dark, the first in her romantic suspense series, The Associates. A retired safecracker/interior designer and a math nerd/secret agent man? Oh, yeah, baby, count me in! I was hooked on this series immediately and quickly inhaled it along with Off The Edge (#2) and Into The Shadows (#3). So I guess it's not a surprise that I also devoured Behind The Mask, #4 in the series, in practically one sitting. How do you do it, Carolyn Crane? How do you get me to step out of my comfort zone and make me fall in love with, oh, say, a badass assassin/mercenary with caveman tendencies and a kickass/former CIA agent/forensic botanist?

 

I believe part of the answer can be found in characters who are never one dimensional, never all dark or all light, instead encompassing, and balanced by, both, filled in with many shades of gray in between. Take for instance, Hugo Martinez in Behind The Dark who "started out as something of a benevolent mercenary" fighting in places like the Balkans, Algeria, the Israeli/Lebanese border, then morphing into the mythical Kabakas at the height of the wars in Valencia, South America. Kabakas with his signature "blood-red mask with silver stars painted in it", "an uncanny ability to put a blade in a man's eye from a hundred feet away", and always killing all but one person to act as a messenger. But this assassin also occasionally fought for the "downtrodden" and is the same killer who finds and rescues a crying toddler, Paolo, sitting by his dead mother on a battlefield. Who loves the child as his own son even if he doesn't quite know what to do with him or how to interact with him.

 

"It was Paolo he wanted to hold, yes, but maybe, just a little bit, it was Hugo’s younger self. Hugo left, holding his boy to his breaking heart. All these years. It would’ve been so easy to play with him. So easy to call him by his name. (Loc. 2777)

 

“I never…I never knew,” he confessed. Never knew the boy would want that. Never knew how. (Loc. 2809)

 

Or how to say 'I love you' beyond actions like building up the fire to keep him warm as Paolo plays by the fireplace or teaching him things, questionable though they are, like:

 

"Don’t cower unless you have a reason. Don’t fall to your knees until they cut you off at the shins." (Loc. 712)

 

A man who cared for his mother after his father died, and she lost her position as a maid to a billionaire oilman. Who collected treasures like shiny coins, train tickets, bottle caps, colorful stamps, American baseball cards, his Moro graduation rite wand, and the "small puzzle box", a treasured gift from his father because it was one of the rare times he'd been kind to Hugo, and it had symbolized "hope." Here's Hugo/Kabakas: complex, multi-faceted, heartbreakingly real.

Or how about Zelda Pierce, a "retired" CIA agent who freely admits she's a master at "cold fucking", able to "have sex with truly awful, truly evil men without breaking a sweat." But she's bailed her twin sister, Liza, out of jail, put her in countless drug rehab programs, and is determined to save her once again by switching places with her after Liza's boyfriend, Mikos, loses her in a card game to a brutal drug cartel leader known as Brujos. Zelda, who's tormented and guilt-ridden by her failure after she broke under torture six years ago, giving up a fellow undercover agent's name, resulting in his death. This is Zelda who loves creating a blueberry muffin taste by combining blue and yellow Jelly Belly jelly beans. This is Zelda who acts as witness, "an ally, if only in spirit" for those she sees die.

 

She’d seen too many people die horribly, but she always took the time to honor the dead in her mind, and to imagine a kind of peace for them. She used to do it with animals on the roadside as a girl, and even plants. (Loc. 513)

 

Maybe it's Carolyn Crane's talent for creating fascinating details that are just totally made-up but feel like they should be real. It could be something as prosaic as the plant in Behind The Mask known as Savinca verde. (I googled the freaking plant, and finally ran across an interview with the author admitting she made it up. Brilliant!) For hundreds of years, the plant has grown only on the Verde Sirca mountainside in Buena Vista, Valencia, South America, the harvest in bud form bringing financial stability to the small village.

 

The Savinca verde was only valuable to wholesale florists when the flowers were in bud form, so that they could bloom just before they were sold for exorbitant amounts of money in high-end floral shops. In fact, a tract of open flowers always meant tragedy—no farmer would let the precious flower open unless he was injured or dead. You never wanted to see the blood-red heart of the savinca. (Loc. 307)

 

Hugo sees this flower in both forms as a metaphor for himself: the many deaths Kabakas brought to so many people, that awful lonely, isolating feeling of being unloved and unwanted all his life in the red heart of the blooms and his stunted potential in the buds caused by the emotional, mental, and physical abuse of his father.

 

The villagers believed the plants could feel. He, too, believed it at times, and he felt a sudden rush of grief for them. Like a small child, a plant could not run away when there was trouble or fighting. It could only grow, vulnerable in its tiny patch of dirt. An unaccountable thickness filled his throat as he peered across to the red swath at the top side of the slope. Flowers blooming unloved in the fields. (Loc. 2320-2325)

 

Perhaps it's how the romance and danger/suspense elements find that sweet spot, that delicate balance that is, as Goldilocks said, just right, along with the perfectly paced intervals of action interspersed with description. Zelda's mission ratchets up from merely dangerous to life threatening when Brujos' men hand her off to the henchmen of a truly evil villain, El Gorrion. Soon, Zelda disarms the leader and his helpers and almost manages to commandeer the plane taking her to El Gorrion's compound. This scene was a nail biting one for me and is followed immediately by a dramatic introduction to Kabakas in all his murderous glory. Honestly, I'm a little squeamish about graphic violence, but the scene in which Kabakas mows down El Gorrion's men at the air strip was as beautifully choreographed as a ballet. His power and almost otherworldly abilities to withstand assault of any kind was mesmerizing and riveting.

 

She sucked in a breath, centering herself. And then she heard a sound she didn’t recognize—a swish-swish-swish, like something flying through the air, followed by a strange yell—a shout of pain, but worse, somehow. Eerie and high-pitched. Another cry sounded farther away.

 

Suddenly, everything quieted—even the animals and birds. Everything but the labored breathing that told her somebody was behind the Jeep, frightened out of his mind. Aguilo.

 

She glanced up. Bodies were everywhere. And then she saw him—a huge beast of a man in a Kabakas mask strolling casually and openly across the field toward the truck where one group had taken refuge.

 

More shots. Still he walked—or more like stalked—right into the gunfire. He wore fatigues, leathers, black boots, pockets, and packs, all battered and battle-worn. He had the bandolier. Blades gleamed between the fingers of his massive leather-gloved hands.

 

His massive, leather-clad hand dwarfed the blades he threw. He was all dark confidence. Nerves of steel. No mercy, no apologies. Never a fuck-up. Never a break in his excellence. She watched him move, body torqueing, pure economy, fingers hugged by the leather, shining where it gripped tightest.

 

A silver barong had appeared in his left hand, the essential Kabakas accessory. It seemed to glide alongside him as he closed the distance with a confident stride, brown skin gleaming with sweat, muscles surging over his forearms and disappearing into his gloves. The man pulsed with power.

 

Calm and sure as the moon, the Kabakas impostor strode on, right into the gunfire. With a flick of the wrist, he threw a knife, and Guz was down. Pierced in the knee. Wailing in pain, Guz rolled over, leveling his pistol at his masked attacker. He was between her and Kabakas now. She stiffened as Guz shot, once and then again at nearly point-blank range.

 

The man acting as Kabakas reached over his shoulder into his pack and drew out a barong sword. Now he had two. He began to swing them in a figure eight, Sinawali style, as he strolled toward the leader.

 

It was something to behold, the way the silver ends shone in a figure-eight blur that sometimes shifted into more of an X pattern. Guz shot at him, and the Kabakas impostor just kept walking. Guz shot again. Clang. Zelda felt the breath go out of her. Using the blades to block bullets. A Kabakas hallmark. It wasn’t magical; if you angled blades just so, and if you were good at gauging directions and trajectories, you did have roving plates of armor. (Loc. 896-949)

 

Every bit of dialogue between Zelda and Hugo or Hugo and Paolo or Dax and Zelda (or whomever), each and every action taken by all the characters including the secondary characters, and even the smoking hot sex scenes mixed with a bit of kink are necessary to advance the story. The attraction between Zelda and Hugo sizzles almost immediately. Her history as a Kabakas hunter of Hugo, her front row seats to the Kabakas killing spectacle and being an eyewitness of the man and the myth in action feeds into an elemental part of her psyche. Hugo likewise recognizes the warrior in Zelda and responds in kind. I had no doubt these two were made for each other. I loved how Zelda helps Hugo open up to Paolo, the villagers, and to her.

 

His hands balled into fists deep inside his pockets as Liza’s words rang through his mind. He is a real person. See him. She’d meant it about Paolo, but she could’ve said it of Julian and the villagers. Why should his word have weight? Hugo wasn’t a part of the village. He barely interacted with them or treated them as neighbors. How arrogant to assume they would trust him about El Gorrion not coming back, or risk their families on rumors—or on the casual word of an outsider to a shopkeeper. He’d thought it would be enough. It wasn’t. (Loc. 2336-2342)

 

I love Hugo and Zelda, with all their flaws and insecurities and vulnerability. Maybe because of them. Behind The Mask and all the Associates books that precede it are something beyond just romantic suspense, with an added dark, edgy element. They may not be everyone's cup of tea, but I love each and every one of them, especially Behind The Mask. My "reading" comfort zone is historical romance, but as long as there are Associates books (and books like them), I'm more than willing to push those boundaries and try something wonderfully different. I highly recommend this book as well as the first three in the series.