Cautious Optimism in Helen Scales’ ‘What the Wild Sea Can Be: The Future of the World’s Ocean’

by Adele A. Wilby Marine biologist Helen Scales’ previous book The Brilliant Abyss: True Tales of Exploring the Deep Sea, Discovering Hidden Life and Selling the Seabed, brilliantly provided us with a glimpse of the wondrous life forms that inhabit the abyss, the deep sea. She also made known her profound concern for the future…

Sandro Veronesi’s “The Hummingbird”: A Literary Delight

by Adele A Wilby The Italian author Sandro Veronesi’s latest novel, his ninth, The Hummingbird, is a clever book that offers the reader both literary pleasure and serious thought. The novel is essentially a family saga, and like all family histories and stories it has a complexity of interpersonal relationships and human emotions all woven…

Oceans of Life

by Adele A Wilby Marine biologist Helen Scales’ book, The Brilliant Abyss: True Tales of Exploring the Deep Sea, Discovering Hidden Life and Selling the Seabed is a triumph. The four major sections in the book, ‘Explore’, ‘Depend’, ‘Exploit’ and ‘Preserve’ are indicators of the breadth of issues addressed in the book: the variety of…

Unconventional Women: Emma Goldman and Simone de Beauvoir

by Adele  A Wilby Biographies frequently provide us with insights into individual characters in a way that autobiographies might not: the third person narrator offers the prospect of greater ‘objectivity’ when evaluating and narrating information and events and circumstances.  And so it is with Paul Avrich and Karen Avrich’s Sasha and Emma: The Anarchist Odyssey…