The Real North Korea: Life and Politics in the Failed Stalinist Utopia

The Real North Korea: Life and Politics in the Failed Stalinist Utopia by Andrei Lankov was written in 2013, two years after the Supreme Leader Marshal Kim Jong Un succeeded his late father, the Dear Leader Comrade General Kim Jong Il. Lankov was a Soviet-era exchange student who studied in Pyongyang and his fluency in Korean endeared him to his teachers and gave him access to the North Korean public. This book was unlike other modern accounts of the DPRK which I have read, in that it painted thoroughly dismal portraits of the future of the North after the inevitable downfall of its totalitarian system of government. I have read--and reviewed--quite a lot about the DPRK already, yet no book went as far in its detailed scenarios about the state of the northern half of the Korean peninsula after the Kim regime collapses. Yet before we get to the future of the DPRK, we have to deal with its past and present, and Lankov kept his history confined to the first chapter. The author thankfully did not bore me to sleep with his Korean War history, as I am prone to doze off when I read war stories. Thus I confess a personal prejudice for war histories in general.

Kim Jong Un inherited a country that is worse off that at any time since the Korean War. The DPRK continues to struggle as a nation punished by sanctions and does not want to see another famine. What can it do to feed its population if its economy cannot provide? The answer, surprisingly, seems to be by not reforming its economy:

"Unfortunately for the common North Koreans, the Pyongyang leaders' unwillingness to emulate China has very rational explanations. North Korean leaders stubbornly resist reform not because they are ideological zealots who blindly believe in the prescriptions of the Juche Idea (they do not, and the idea itself is too nebulous to be a guide to a practical policy anyway) nor because they are ignorant of the outside world. They are neither irrational nor ideological--on the contrary, they are rational to the extreme, being, perhaps, the most perfect bunch of Machiavellians currently in operation. The North Korean leaders do not want reforms because they realize that in the specific conditions produced by the division of their country, such reforms are potentially destabilizing and, if judged from the ruling elite's point of view, constitute the surest way of political (and, perhaps, physical) suicide."

Lankov asserts that any reforms would trigger the end of the Kim regime. Once the population tastes reform, it will demand more. The North Korean elite fears an Arab Spring or a Ceaușescu-style purge if reforms are introduced, therefore no one is willing to implement any kind of change out of fear of losing one's elite privileges. Without a new economy, the North is left on its own, and can only get attention by stirring up trouble. And the DPRK has perfected the art of rocking the boat by blackmailing its enemies and even its few allies:

"Indeed, from the North Korean point of view, it did not merely confirm that blackmail works, but rather confirmed that blackmail works wonders. One could hardly find a better confirmation of the efficiency of Pyongyang's usual tactics--first make a crisis, then escalate tensions, and finally extract payments and concessions for the restoration of the status quo."

The North Korean tactic of issuing nuclear threats then reaping the rewards--all on its own terms--has led some diplomats to say enough is enough. They are calling North Korea's bluff, knowing full well that the North will never launch a nuclear missile against the South or any of the ROK's western allies. To do so would be an act of suicide. The strategy of leaving North Korea alone, letting it rant to an empty room, is new, yet has not proven to be entirely effective, as the North has perfected the art of getting whatever it wants regardless of international pressures. It is much like trying to say no to wailing baby:

"The North Korean regime is thus not going to respond to either pressure or rewards, and this is increasingly obvious to the interested parties. There is therefore a great--and growing--temptation to say that North Korea is better to be forgotten and safely left alone. This is the essence of the 'strategic patience' strategy, which has quietly become the mainstream thinking of the US foreign policy establishment after 2009. In essence it says that the United States is willing to talk to North Korea, and maybe even 'reward' it with some monetary and political concessions, as long as North Korea does what the United States wants it to do--that is, starts dismantling its nuclear program. If it doesn't do so, the United States should, as strategic patience promoters insist, ignore North Korea's antics, since North Korea isn't going to be all that harmful anyway. A somewhat similar attitude seems to be dominant among the South Korean Right. These people believe that aid and political concessions make sense only if North Korean leaders agree to policies that are seen as 'rational' by Seoul.

"This reasoning might be attractive, but it seems to be unrealistic. North Korea has not the slightest desire to be left alone. Indeed, they cannot afford to be left alone. In order to compensate for the innate inefficiency of their economy, they need outside help, delivered on their specific conditions. So far, the best way to squeeze this aid has been to appear dangerous, unpredictable, and irrational. Therefore, they will continue to appear thus, attempting to cause more trouble for those countries and international forces from whom they hope to squeeze some resources. The alternative is not really attractive--either to survive on meager and perhaps diminishing returns of their nonfunctioning economy or to become excessively dependent on just one sponsor (China)."

Lankov believes that the North cannot sustain itself and regime collapse is inevitable. When this will all happen is the question. The author supplied multiple scenarios of reunification, none of which involved a peaceful transition and blending of states. The irony is, as the Korean War falls further into history, more and more South Koreans do not want reunification. They see the costs they will have to bear to support their impoverished countrymen and say no thank-you. The mainland Chinese are worried that regime collapse will send a flood of starving unskilled North Koreans across its border, so they aim to keep the status quo. The international reaction is to leave the North Koreans to lie in their own threadbare bed, yet pretty soon the bedposts will rot and the mattress will fall down. What then? No one wants to deal with this inevitability.

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The Medici: Power, Money and Ambition in the Italian Renaissance

Insanely rich bankers and investors, Popes (and not always good Popes), champions of humanism, Godfathers to the rich and powerful, supreme diplomats, facilitators for some of the brave early practitioners of experimental science, extravagant patrons of the arts, and experts at marrying into royal dynasties. The Medici clan were, if nothing else, an extremely busy household. From humble beginnings (the first recorded mention of the family occurred around the year 1230) in the hills and valleys near Florence to the very pinnacle of power in the Italian peninsula and beyond the Medici are, and have been for generations, a fascination to everyone interested in Renaissance history.

Not all but many members of the Medici family had unquenchable ambition. They were smart, that’s for sure. Their ancestors started off as money changers probably hauling around a little cart in the local piazza exchanging florins for lira or scudo (all kinds of different coins were in use at the time). This is nothing revolutionary. Lots of families were doing similar work. But like I said the Medici had ambition---and smarts. With mathematical principles as their tools (maybe “weapons” would be a better analogy) they figured out how to exchange their coins for higher profits. Then they turned their efforts towards making money lending at interest (they even managed to maneuver around the delicate religious prohibition against usury—the history of this concept is interesting in its own right and worth researching). From there they became shrewd investors with an eye for quality. They bribed the right people (you never want to bride the wrong people, it’s just not profitable) and eventually got themselves the coveted title of “Bankers to the Pope.” Money just seemed to come looking for them at that point.

The Medici were a lot of things but they were not nobles. The nobility have never liked upstarts (not much has changed in this regard). To break through that barrier (again ambition and smarts) they doled out florin like animal balloons at a carnival. Oh the parties! Nobody schmoozed like the Medic schmoozed. Fast forward three generations and you find Medici blood in French, Spanish, and Germanic royal families. Cosimo and Lorenzo were smiling in their graves.

As you and I know the good times don’t last, they never, ever do. How does one describe what was lost to the Medici over time? I want to say “vitality” but that doesn’t capture it. The “spirit of ambition” comes closer but is still lacking; there was plenty of luck and serendipity in what they managed to accomplish. It seemed Fortuna’s gifts were whittled away with each passing generation. The family just didn’t have it anymore. Read the chapters on Cosimo de’ Medici and then read the chapters describing the life and times of Gian Gastone de’ Medici and you will understand what I mean.

The rise and fall of this awesome family is captured brilliantly by Paul Strathern. His historical biography of the family has a great narrative arc. The final chapter left me with a sense of melancholy as though with the passing away of Anna Maria Luisa the world had lost something special. And it did.

One last bit of business. You should know this book is more than a biography of the various Medici family members. You could read the book and walk away with a rich understanding (and appreciation) for the Italian Renaissance as an important historical era in the development of western civilization.  The big artists of the time, and individuals like Galileo Galilei and Savonarola, all make appearances in the story. All in all a great read.

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Spain: The Centre Of The World 1519 - 1682

Robert Goodwin has written a history of imperial Spain that has an almost novelistic quality in its presentation. The book is divided into two parts. Part one, titled simply Gold, covers the era of expansion when Spaniards built one of the world’s largest overseas empires. Part two, titled Glitter, covers the era of decline when the Spanish empire, overstretched and bureaucratically encumbered, had to contend with a series of costly wars and an extraordinary currency inflation. It was in this glitter age, however, that the greatest of Spain’s artistic achievements were accomplishment.

I am noticing a trend with many of the historical non-fiction books that I read these days. They all begin with a prologue or introductory chapter that details a particularly dramatic scene from history. In Spain: The Centre of the World 1519-1682 the prologue describes the first treasure ships arriving at Seville from the new world. The ships carry large golden disks once the property of the Aztec emperor but now held in the hands of sweat and grime covered conquistadors whose heads are filled with dreams of land and titles, normally the preserve of nobility but up for grabs at the right price. These harquebus carrying warriors wait anxiously to present their emperor Charles V with this incredible gift. It is one of those moments in history when it seems the universe holds its breath. Charles V, whose eyes must have matched the circumference of those disks once he saw them, would have understood immediately the significance of this prize. The disks meant empire. The colonies could now be properly settled and managed, the wars abroad were now winnable, the issues domestically could now be resolved and all of it paid for by American gold and silver.

The rise of Spain was rapid. It began with the joining in marriage of the crowns of Castile and Aragon. This union was consolidated by the very capable Charles V who did much to expand and consolidate the early empire. His son Philip II brought the empire to its height before witnessing the beginnings of its slow but inevitable decline. Spain had produced some fantastic art during its rise but in its decline art reached a level of beauty and influence that has remained an impressive legacy. Names such as Cervantes, Velazquez and El Greco belong among the most illustrious in human artistic endeavour.

What I like about the book is that the author takes imaginative liberties with his historical materials. He provides the reader with a possible (all be it hypothetical) dialogue between notable historical figures. For example, there is a brief discussion about art between the Emperor Charles V and the painter Titian (who though born in Italy spent much of his productive life as Spanish royal court painter), and a spiritual tete-a-tete between St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross. There is also an extended discussion of Cervantes’ famous work, Don Quixote. History with some literary criticism thrown in—wonderful. 

Goodwin has done justice to the dramatic story of the rise and fall of the Spanish Empire. If you like reading about the histories of countries and/or kingdoms, and if you like your history to be entertaining, then this book will satisfy.

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Do No Harm: Stores of Life, Death and Brain Surgery

Sometimes . . . I will pause for a while, rest my hands on the arm-rests, and look at the brain I am operating on. Are the thoughts that I am thinking as I look at this lump of fatty protein covered in blood vessels really made out of the same stuff? And the answer always comes back—they are—and the thought itself is too crazy, too incomprehensible, and I get on with the operation. (p. 67–68)

With Oliver Sacks’s death in 2015, the world lost a brilliant neurologist and a highly skilled science writer. Sacks’s accessible case studies of people with neurological disorders in The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and several other bestselling books introduced me and millions of others to the fascinating mysteries of the brain. I never tire of reading neuroscience case studies, so I was happy to discover Dr. Henry Marsh’s recent contribution to the genre: Do No Harm: Stores of Life, Death and Brain Surgery.

Drawing from his decades of experience as a brain surgeon in London and in Ukraine, Marsh introduces readers to particular brain tumours or conditions—a different one in each chapter—and then goes on to detail his surgical interventions as well as his interactions with the patients he helps and the patients he cannot.

Marsh excels at describing the surgical approaches and tools he uses for each procedure, making readers feel as if they are in the operating theatre with him. I now understand, for example, how the tiny aneurysm clip works—or sometimes doesn’t—by gazing down the binocular operating microscope with Marsh and watching as he painstakingly clamps the six millimetre titanium life saver across an aneurysm’s fragile neck while wrestling with a faulty applicator.

While most of the stories in Do Not Harm end well, Marsh is frank about the ones that don’t. He discusses his mistakes and failures of judgment with candour, and challenges his patients and his readers to confront the uncertainty and risks inherent in any brain surgery. Marsh is honest about how he still agonizes over his choice of words when communicating with patients. He tries always to deliver just the right mix of optimism and realism for each situation, and he sometimes fails to do this well. 

It becomes clear throughout Do No Harm that Marsh has little patience for bureaucracy and inefficiency in the public health care system—England’s National Health Service, in his case. He is bitingly critical of his hospital’s bed management policies and surgery scheduling practices, and offers a particularly potent example of how digital health records can get in the way of timely patient care. While Marsh’s criticisms are coloured by bitterness and even a touch of arrogance at times, there is much value in seeing how public health care and hospital administration can look from a surgeon’s perspective. 

Whether or not you agree with Dr. Marsh’s premise that “neuroscience tells us it is highly improbable that we have souls” (p. 378), you will appreciate the expanded sense of wonder and mystery that Do No Harm will stimulate. As Marsh summarizes mid-way through his book:

Our sense of self, our feelings and our thoughts, our love for others, our hopes and ambitions, our hates and fears all die when our brains die. Many people deeply resent this view of things, which not only deprives us of life after death but also seems to downgrade thought to mere electrochemistry and reduces us to mere automata, to machines. Such people are profoundly mistaken, since what it really does is upgrade matter into something infinitely mysterious that we do not understand. There are one hundred billion nerve cells in our brains. Does each one have a fragment of consciousness within it? How many nerve cells do we require to be conscious or to feel pain? Or does consciousness and thought reside in the electrochemical impulses that join these billions of cells together? Is a snail aware? Does it feel pain when you crush it underfoot? Nobody knows. (p. 378)

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Reckless: My Life as a Pretender

I'm a big fan of The Pretenders, but more than that, I'm a Chrissie Hynde fan. To me, she has always been the epitome of the female rock frontman. She's the whole package - guitar player, singer, songwriter, commanding stage presence, pure rock image, and smoldering, tough-girl beauty. I was naturally interested reading her memoirs, even more so when I learned she wrote the book herself, without a professional writer.

Reckless: My Life as a Pretender is aptly titled. Hynde's story is one of rash decisions, massive drinking and drug use, and a sizeable amount of danger. It's also a story of following your heart more than your head (often disregarding your head altogether), about loving music and the rock ethic so intensely, that only that life will do.

Hynde was ready and willing to live a nomadic, stripped-down life, without regard to commercial success, and often without material comfort at all, because comfort and success and everything that goes with it didn't matter. Only music and the rock life - and the true connections that she felt through those - mattered.

So while this review in The New York Times reads Reckless as a cautionary tale, I do not. To me it is simply an honest account without judgment. There's no doubt that Hynde's choices sometimes led to pain and suffering, but there's also no doubt they led her to her most authentic and fulfilled life. She's clearly not advocating a life of drug use and reckless decisions. She's just telling us that's what she did, for better or worse.

The book's subtitle - My Life as a Pretender - is apt, too, as Hynde often saw herself as an impostor, and maybe still does to some extent. Throughout the book, she is self-deprecating about her own talents. It isn't false modesty. It's her an honest self-appraisal from someone who has lived "on nerves and feelings" (as someone Hynde and I mutually adore once wrote) and can't quite understand how her crazy life led her, at least sometimes, to success.

In Reckless, Hynde spends a long time recounting her young years, growing up in Akron, Ohio - her constant sense of alienation, her electric discovery of her musical soul, the scary and dangerous and occasionally fun situations she found herself in. Her pilgrimage to Europe - first London, then Paris, then, after a disastrous attempt to live in the US again, settling in to live in London permanently - is also documented in quite a bit of detail.

Two-thirds of the way through the book, The Pretenders still have not formed. The formation of the band, their early writing and recording, and the deaths of two members of the original lineup, all happen very quickly at the end of the book. I was left with a lot of questions.

The writing itself is very uneven, veering from moving and lyrical, and often humourous, to clunky and ridiculous. The book is sometimes extremely raw and revealing, and sometimes hazy and guarded. Some particularly rough times that Hynde survived - the subject of many book reviews - are recounted only cryptically.

Overall, though, it's a fascinating read. If you've ever fantasized about the rock-and-roll life - ever wondered how a misfit girl from the American midwest ends up leading a bunch of British men in an iconic rock band - and especially if, like me, you love Chrissie Hynde - this book is very entertaining. [This review was originally published on wmtc.]

Find this book in the Mississauga Library System's online catalogue.

Girl in a Band: a Memoir

Assuming that the band Sonic Youth doesn't have 100% name recognition amongst our readers, I should start this off by providing a little bit of background - Kim Gordon is one of the founding members of Sonic Youth, a rock band formed by Gordon, Thurston Moore, and Lee Ranaldo in New York City in 1981. Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore married in 1984. Their daughter, Coco, was born in 1994. Their marriage, and subsequently the band, broke up in 2011.

Sonic Youth were very influencial in the alternative music scene, with a large repertoire of experimental music using alternative instrument tuning, noise, and feedback. Their songs could range from generally melodic right through to screeching walls of sound (and everything in between).
Gordon describes their song-writing process:

The way the band composed songs was pretty much always the same. Thurston or Lee would usually sing the poppy, more melodic things from riffs one of them wrote; I sang the weirder, more abstract things that came out of all of us playing together and rearranging until everything jelled. My voice has always had a fairly limited range, and when you're writing a melody, you tend to write it for your own voice. Lee, on the other hand, usually brought in songs that were complete and ready to go, then we layered dissonance over. (p. 145)

In case you were curious about what they sound like, see their music video for Kool Thing - one of their bigger hits (1990). Lyrics and vocals are by Kim Gordon at the height of her powers, and is apparently inspired by an interview she did with rapper LL Cool J, where they had a bit of a clash.

While their music may not be to everyone's taste, Kim Gordon's memoir is a very interesting look into being a woman with a family immersed in the world of popular music. We get a sense of her creative process, as she contends with issues of identity, feminism, politics, and society. Although her songs are often abstract in nature, they are always hard-hitting and thought-provoking. It also becomes clear that Gordon identifies primarily as a visual artist in the New York art scene, with her music career as an incidental second. Her music takes her artistic sensibilities and translates them to word and sound.

The book starts with a little bit of Gordon's biography leading up to meeting Thurston Moore and the early years of the band. The second half of the book is a series of anecdotes (rather than a continuous history) detailing significant incidents in her life and career.

Through this collage, Gordon presents the different strands of her life - art, music, marriage and family, and how they interconnect. At times "it was hard, working on art projects, running the house, raising a daughter, and having a full-time music career. I've never had any domestic talents or hobbies." (p. 233)

Central to the book is her relationship with Thurston Moore, across 27 years of marriage and working together in the band - their life together, parenting, working, touring, and so on. It also documents Moore's pulling away from their marriage and their eventual separation.

Coco was seven months old when we did our first two-week tour in England [for one of Gordon's side projects]. Again, thanks to the jet lag and the breast feeding, it wasn't easy, but Thurston came along to take care of Coco. He wouldn't have missed it anyway. He was always a big supporter of whatever I did in and out of the band, and I loved that about him - his generosity. Creatively I never felt any sense of competition with him. (p.206)

I did feel some compassion for Thurston,and I still do. I was sorry for the way he had lost his marriage, his band, his daughter, his family, our life together - and himself. But that is a lot different from forgiveness. (p. 258)

Book Club Discussion Questions:

1. Does this book hold any interest for readers not familiar with the music of Sonic Youth?
2. Kim Gordon asks herself this question: "Am I 'empowered'? If you have to hide your hypersensitivity, are you really a 'strong woman'?" How empowered would you say she is throughout the experiences documented in this book?
3. Gordon quotes some of her lyrics throughout the book. How would you describe her music?
4. The music world in which she traveled seems rather male-dominated. How does Kim Gordon fit into this world?
5. What are some of the challenges Kim Gordon faced?
6. How is Thurston Moore portrayed in this book?
7. Coco was quoted as saying, "You don't know what it's like to be your daughter." What was Coco's life like growing up, having celebrity parents?
8. Kim Gordon shows us what her life, and other musicians' lives were like behind the scenes. How does the life of famous musicians look with the glamour stripped away?
9. The linear biographical structure quickly breaks down into anecdotes. How does this format help convey a sense of her life and inner thoughts?
10. Discuss Kim Gordon as a potential role model.

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A Feathered River Across the Sky: The Passenger Pigeon's Flight to Extinction

A Feathered River Across the Sky: The Passenger Pigeon's Flight to Extinction by Joel Greenberg was published in 2014, the centenary of the pigeon's extinction. Over a billion pigeons flew over Toronto in May of 1860, yet by 1914 only one was left in the world. Ever since Europeans landed in North America they have been both in awe of as well as at war with the passenger pigeon. I do not cry at movies and rarely when I read a book, but I do get misty-eyed when I hear about language death or when I read about the extinction of a species. The kakapo might still be saved yet the passenger pigeon, whose peak population may safely be estimated at the low end to number at least three billion, has been silenced from the skies. 

In the last fifty years of the species' life the population fell from one billion to none. This seems unbelievable. So much of what Greenberg wrote was prefaced by similar phrases. How could a billion birds dwindle down to zero in only fifty years? The birds' enormous population was their downfall. No one would ever have imagined that the pigeon population would someday diminish when there were millions upon millions of them:

"As amazing as was the abundance of the pigeons, the litany of slaughter dominates the history of this species. People killed them in virtually every way imaginable and for many reasons. And at times, seemingly for no reason at all."

It is not enough that the passenger pigeon succumbed to extinction that is tragic. As Greenberg wrote about the decline of the species into the early twentieth century, the hunting never stopped. Author Edward Howe Forbush wrote:

"From soon after the first occupancy of New England by the whites until about the year 1895, the netting of the Passenger Pigeon in North America never ceased. Thousands of nets were spread all along the Atlantic seaboards" (italics his).

As long as the birds continued to blacken the sky and eclipse the sun for hours (John James Audubon reported one such migration that blackened the sky for three straight days) then hunters saw the pigeon numbers as limitless. Greenberg quoted C. W. Webber who wrote in 1854:

"Is it a tornado coming? What a deep veiled roar!...The full burst of the deafening volume of that vast sound is borne upon you overwhelmingly with a current of fresh air strong enough to swerve you in the saddle. They are over us! We pause in speechless amazement. Half the sky is obscured...When will it cease? Is it one of the everlasting floods? We gaze until the real night is gathering around us."

A visitor to a nesting site in Wisconsin wrote in 1871:

"And then arose a roar, compared with which all previous noises ever heard are but lullabies, and which caused more than one of the expectant and excited party to drop their guns, and seek shelter behind and beneath the nearest trees. The sound was condensed terror. Imagine a thousand threshing machines running under full headway, with an equal quota of railroad trains passing through covered bridges--imagine these massed into a single flock, and you probably have a faint conception of the terrific roar following the monstrous black cloud of pigeons as they passed in rapid flight in the gray light of morning, a few feet before our faces."

Greenberg quoted many other impressions when the cyclone of pigeons was heard in the distance, and then of the cacophonous racket when they flew overhead. I can say honestly that if I had a chance to go back in time to live through any event in history, I often wish that I could see a passenger pigeon migration. 

The pigeons made their home in the greatest concentrations in Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York and the five small New England states. Southern Ontario was also a prime location and Toronto is mentioned throughout A Feathered River:

"A couple of decades later in York, Ontario (now Toronto), the arrival of the pigeons triggered another outburst of orgiastic firing. For several days, the city took on the character of a war zone, with the nonstop cacophony of discharging firearms resounding everywhere. Police attempted to enforce the ordinance banning the use of guns within the city, but it proved impossible given the sheer numbers of transgressors, including those of such high status as city council members, crown lawyers, and even the county sheriff. The forces of law and order capitulated. 'It was found that pigeons, flying within easy shot, were a temptation too strong for human virtue to withstand.'"

Greenberg also offered up some local history:

"The name of Mimico, a Toronto suburb, derives from the nineteenth-century Mississauga word, omiimiikaa, denoting a place where wild pigeons gather."

Even when the flocks were reduced to the hundreds, and even in single-digit gatherings, the birds were preyed upon. How do you go from millions of birds in one year and then a minuscule fraction the next? Answer: slaughter them during the last massive nesting site as in Petoskey, Michigan in 1878. With the population no longer sustainable to survive, they were doomed. Very few eggs hatched in the coming years:

"From 1870 to 1882 was a critical period in the history of the passenger pigeon. What happened in those years made the bird's extinction inevitable. In 1871, the largest nesting on record occurred, but 1878 saw the final attempt of the birds to breed in vast numbers. Four years after that, the last nesting attempts of any size numbered at most a few or so million birds. By then, there were probably not enough living passenger pigeons to have kept the species going for long even if they had been allowed to breed. But, if anything, these remnants encountered even more ferocious exploitation, and so their efforts to reproduce became virtually futile."

The pigeons were targets for a number of reasons: they were a cheap and easy food supply, for one. Who hasn't chuckled while watching cartoons hearing of "pigeon pie"? The pigeons, when the massive flocks roosted, were also known to leave complete destruction:

"Their sheer volume imposed severe damage on the trees that supported them, sometimes making the timber valueless. Walter Rader, who grew up on a farm in Monroe County, Indiana, in the 1860s, recalled hearing the nightly crash of breaking limbs from a pigeon roost in a nearby maple grove."

Pigeons fed on acorns and beechnuts but were also known to feed on grain and freshly-sown seed. Farmers looked at the pigeons in the same way as they saw a plague of locusts. The killing however never stopped, even when the massive flocks ceased to darken the sky. By 1900 the pigeon was virtually extinct in the wild. Greenberg documented the last birds of the species from the start of the twentieth century. The last wild pigeon was shot in 1902, leaving three flocks in captivity. The last birds of the species were not treated with respect even in death. Time after time Greenberg wrote about the disposal--in the trash--of some of the last birds. The second-last bird, a male, died on July 10, 1910. His gravesite was the trashcan. Martha lived alone for four years as the last of her species:

"It is easy to become anthropomorphic about Martha's situation as the idea of impending aloneness so absolute is heart-rending, especially in light of what had been such a short time before."

I fully agree. How could visitors to the Cincinnati Zoo, where Martha lived, not gaze in awe and sadness at her? Instead, visitors threw sand at her cage in an attempt to make her move. Martha died on September 1, 1914, marking one of the few occasions where we have an exact date of a species' extinction. 

How times have changed. Conservation efforts were in their infancy in the late nineteenth century. Well-meaning legislation to save the passenger pigeon was ineffective as the pigeon population was already mortally low. We have conservation protection of animals and the environment now, and the roots of these preservation measures all go back to those few who rallied to save the passenger pigeon. 

I found two errors in the book: one misspells the actor's surname as Donald Pleasance instead of Pleasence; and a subchapter is entitled "Stilled Wings: The New Millennium and the End of the Passenger Pigeon as a Creature of the Sky". We all know that the passenger pigeon never made it to the new millennium. Greenberg obviously meant to write "The New Century".

Find this book in the Mississauga Library System's on-line catalogue