On the 100th anniversary of the birth of Rachel Carson, the world faces a new environmental disaster, from a chemical similar to DDT. This time the culprit appears to be IMD, or imidacloprid, a relatively new but widely used insecticide in the United States. Many beekeepers and some researchers think IMD is the new prime suspect for the devastating syndrome known as Colony Collapse Disorder, or CCD, which has raised the annual die-off rate of honey bees to 30% of all the beehives in the United States. They say even trace amounts of IMD make bees lose their desire to feed, which would quickly lead to the collapse of their colony. After several days, there are few or no bees left in the hive. Since honey bees are essential to the production of fruit, nut, and vegetable crops around the world, their demise could spell catastrophe for our food supply and global economy.

In a riveting detective story that melds science and politics, Michael Schacker investigates the case of the missing bees, examining the many theories on the cause, including cell phones, mites, new pathogens, and bee management. He then examines the evidence against IMD. The book does much more than illuminate the scientific research, however. Using CCD as a metaphor for our own human hive, Schacker asks:  Are the bees trying to tell us something? Could this be the warning sign of a much larger crisis looming directly ahead? Might humankind suffer someday from “Civilization Collapse Disorder”?  And how must we change our human hive in order to ensure its survival?

Like An Inconvenient Truth and Silent Spring before it, A Spring without Bees is a compelling cautionary tale and a clarion call for action.


My Thoughts: This book is soooooooooo important. It's basically gives you a step-by-step explaination on what is killing the bees, how it's happening, and what we are going to have to do to stop it. It's a little depressing and a little daunting. The Bayer Corporation who invented IMD(the pesticide that is killing the bees), has A LOT invested in this pesticide--they are going to fight hard for it. Anyway, I love science non-fiction books like this! Like anything written by Michael Pollan. Alas, if only I could get my hands on his lastest book. The author isn't just talking about banning this one pesticide, he's talking about a whole change in world view, or "paradiagm shift", as it is called. As he explains, 

"Kuhn shows how paradiagm shifts are really more like religious struggles with opposing doctrines than reasoned theorizing based on scientific evidence. Evidence and data have little to do with it...a Catholic theologian who, when asked by Galileo to view the moons of Jupiter through a telescope, refused on the grounds it could be an optical trick. Yet that was simply a poor excuse, to avoid seeing with his own eyes the proof positive... Could this "paradiagm reluctance" be at play today in the controversy over IMD? Bayer Cropscience reseachers, along with most agrochemistsin the governments and universities, are seeing the world through the eyes of the old paradiagm, as it was before the new worldview of ecology came along." pg. 89

I think this is what makes his writing and point of view unique, yet similar to Rachel Carson's. Also, it turns out that IMD is similar to DDT. Schacker gives us a plan however! This plan includes everything from not using pesticides in your garden to having global campaigns about IMD awareness and banning the pesticide in congress, as well as legislation to help the beekeepers get out of debt.

Okay, done with my rambling--THIS BOOK IS INFORMATIVE AND IMPORTANT. READ IT AND SPREAD THE TRUTH!

Links: http://www.amazon.com/Spring-without-Bees-Collapse-Endangered/dp/1599214326
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ge8kFmujv0&feature=related (it's a movie of the author talking about the book)


Books read this year: A third of John Adams by David McCullough (go read it RIGHT NOW, john/abagail adams are soo cool. I would marry that man or his wife if I could.) Lolita, which I have almost finished. The Color Purple by Alice Walker, read for the the third time >drools<. Cunt by Igna Muscio for the second time.


Next read(s): School girls: Young Women, Self-Esteem and the Confidence Gap by Peggy Orenstein (for the third time, yes, I'm one of those readers that read books over and over again but I haven't re-read it since I was 16, so there!) And anything else that Gemma, my grammar-nazi best friend, requests me to read.

 

Karen Joy Fowler
Fiction; Contemporary Literature

 

This is one of the stranger books I've read in recent years, but entertaining even so.  I loved Fowler's The Jane Austen Book Club, so I didn't even think twice about grabbing this newest release from her.  Wit's End is funnier than TJABC, even though it has darker undertones. 

 

Rima Lanisell is at a bit of a standstill in life, humorous and self-deprecating about herself on the surface, but more deeply, she's haunted by the fact that she's now alone in life, after the deaths of her parents years earlier and much more recently, that of her brother.  Throughout the novel you get the sense of just how traumatized she is, even though she herself doesn't seem to be fully aware of it as she makes jokes and tries to distract herself, which she does by visiting the godmother she barely knows, famed mystery novelist Addison Early. 

 

More than anything, Rima is curious about the never-explained yet obviously important relationship between Addison and Rima's father, Bim, whom Addison had years earlier turned into a recurring character in her stories.  All of her life, Rima has had to explain that Bim Lanisell is actually a real person, but not the character from the famous mystery series.  Since the books are so popular they have a bit of a cult following, and Rima is startled to learn that even she is a topic of interest among enthusiasts of the series, finding her name, pictures and personal details of her life on Wikipedia and chat forums. 

 

Addison is as wonderfully eccentric as you'd want any writer to be, best evidenced by her habit of designing and constructing elaborate dollhouses, complete with murder scenes, for each of her novels.  She's also collected boxes and boxes of letters fans have written not only to her, but to the fictional characters she's created.  As Rima occupies herself with reading through some of the more interesting letters, especially those addressed to Bim Lanisell, the line between fact and fiction becomes decidedly blurred. 

 

Add to this a previously-homeless housekeeper who has as many tattoos as she does exotic dinner recipes, two surly dogs, and a crazy woman who seems to be stalking Rima, and you have a strange but intriguing mix of a literary mystery, comedy and a drama that really steps outside the formulaic boundaries we tend to get used to.  I definitely enjoyed and recommend it.