Focusing on the entire Leakey family, from Louis and Mary Leakey, who were the paleontologist parents of Richard Leakey, also a paleontologist, to Richard’s paleontologist wife Maeve and their daughter Louise, the third generation of Leakey researchers into the origins of human life. Morell’s astounding level of research reveals the Leakeys individually, as a family, as dogged searchers for the truth about man’s origins–and as living, breathing humans.
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Every Sunday afternoon in Kigali, Rwanda, the pool at the Mille-Collines Hotel is a gathering spot for government workers, wealthy Rwandans engaged in various trades, aid workers, journalists, foreign visitors, and enterprising prostitutes, who gather to drink, exchange news, gossip among themselves, and participate in the “vaguely surrealistic play being acted out at the pool.” The pool is, in many ways, a microcosm of life in Rwanda, illustrating the pressures and competing interests among various facets of society, all wanting to protect what they already have, at the very least, and, they hope, to increase their power, influence, or wealth.
Through these people who visit the pool, all of whom were real and who are described with their real names, Gil Courtemanche, a former journalist in Rwanda himself, boldly illustrates the growing resentments and fears which tear apart the fabric of society and lead to the genocide of almost a million Tutsi people in 1994.
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Focusing on the period between 1956 and 1958, Matthew Brzezinski recreates the Cold War atmosphere which began in the aftermath of World War II and culminated with the Russian launching of Sputnik in October, 1957. Both the United States and the Soviet Union, in their rush to occupy their post-war sectors of Germany, had wanted to acquire as much German technology as possible—rockets, missiles, and, of course, the German scientists who made it all possible. The US had all the advantages—finding a secret missile lab (hidden in a mountain with a concentration camp in front of it), removing dozens of advanced rockets and missiles to the US, and enticing key scientists to emigrate to the United States. Still, it was the Soviet Union, with far fewer spoils of war and much less developed missile programs, which succeeded in orbiting the first satellite. Brzezinski’s extensive research, detailed character analyses of the key players and their subordinates, and vivid recreations of the economic and political realities of both countries increase the tension in the lead-up to Sputnik.
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Retracing the journeys of Captain James Cook, author Tony Horwitz writes a fast-paced, fascinating, and often very humorous account of his “walk” in the footsteps of Captain Cook, an explorer he obviously admires and whom he attempts to understand and make understandable to his readers. Fascinating as a biography of the complex Captain Cook, as a lively record of the age of exploration, as a modern adventure to “romantic” south Pacific islands, and as research on cultural anthropology, this is an exhilarating and fast-paced narrative, one which will reward careful reading and cause the reader to examine the dubious results of “civilization.” Horwitz obviously enjoyed his research, and the reader will, too, however vicariously.
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In a lively and fast-paced narrative, Bill Weber and Amy Vedder document threats to the gorillas of Rwanda from 1978 1992, presenting graphic accounts of animals injured by snares, beheaded by poachers, exposed to diseases borne by humans, allowed to die for lack of medical care, and forced to live in ever decreasing habitats, with more and more limited food supplies. The outbreak of the Rwandan civil war in 1993, and the ensuing genocide of over a million people, which no western nation or the U.N. intervened to prevent, are depicted dramatically, emotionally, and thoroughly, as the research team returns to Rwanda to find their workers dead, missing, or in jail. Ironically, the gorillas are thriving.
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