Rating: 
Summary: Boston Globe Review
Review: The Boston Globe review of this book is posted at : http://www.dianamuir.com/default/BG062201.html
Rating: 
Summary: Lost in the Bronx
Review: There is a major problem with Wild Nights. And i will lay it out:
There is a chapter called "deep time in the bronx" in this book which I assumed would have dealt with the Bronx--however the bronx was never mentioned in it.
Very confusing and very bad....Why title a chapter "deep time in the bronx" when this borough is not discussed in any way?
Is it to convince readers who are interested in the bronx to buy matthews' book?
What happened? Did editors snip out all mentions of the bronx in a chapter titled "deep time in the bronx"? Or did the editors of this book fail to notice that the bronx wasn't mentioned in a chapter titled "deep time in the bronx"?
I would like to know how this occurred, because I really wanted to learn about the bronx's geology, which I assume what the author meant by "deep time in the bronx".
Please explain to me what happened to the discussion of the bronx in a chapter titled "deep time in the bronx."
I really want to know.
Rating:
Summary: Smart, scary, moving
Review: This is definitely a book about nature for people who think they can't stand nature prose. Not at all sentimental, wonderfully written, full of startling facts, 'Wild Nights' is a lovely and terrifying portrait of the wild New York hiding in plain sight. The last chapter makes me want to move out of the city immediately--but where? As Matthews reminds us, nature was here first, we've pushed it much too hard, and now it's pushing back, globally, locally. Hard as it is for our species to accept, nature always wins.
Rating:
Summary: A terrific read
Review: This is very rewarding nonfiction...it makes you laugh AND think. The writing is excellent: fact made poetry. Having sources at the end seems OK...especially since this is a book that gets better and better (though considerably darker) as it proceeds. The stories about animals in the city are charming, but what stays with you are the long-term implications of nature's return to our overconfident world.
Rating:
Summary: Boston Globe Review
Review: What I liked: There were many interesting stories about how human society and wildlife have interacted over time. There's the guy who catches falcons on New York sky-scrapers, in order to tag and track them, or the folks intrepidly searching for bits of an old railroad station where they've been dumped in the New Jersey Meadowlands.What annoyed me were the wild, almost hysterical visions of potential dystopian nightmares of what may happen to cities, particularly New York, and humankind at large, in the near future. While I personally found the claims plausible and interesting, I was frustrated at the utter lack of any annotation to back them up. After recently reading some hard-hitting, well-researched, and utterly fascinating commentaries on the modern world economy: Eric Schlosser's "Fast Food Nation" and Naomi Klein's "No Logo," both of which present a well organized stream of thought-provoking claims, backed by footnotes, Anne Matthew's novel felt like listening to a well-read savant rambling on, at random, about how interesting her life's work is to her, at least. The sort of person you politely listen to rant away, take a few interesting scraps down to carry with you, and then politely disengage yourself from. In short, she's better heard in the occasional segment on NPR than in an entire novel. The book feels like the product of a researcher who has slapped together bits and pieces of personal notes as they came to her, with no thought towards editing them together or cross-referencing them with source material, in order to push through to the publisher to meet a deadline. ... and yes, this book is totally New York-centric, to an annoyingly exlusionary degree; I'll be gifting mine to a cute NYU student as a gift.
Rating: 
Summary: Eloquent Rambling
Review: What I liked: There were many interesting stories about how human society and wildlife have interacted over time. There's the guy who catches falcons on New York sky-scrapers, in order to tag and track them, or the folks intrepidly searching for bits of an old railroad station where they've been dumped in the New Jersey Meadowlands. What annoyed me were the wild, almost hysterical visions of potential dystopian nightmares of what may happen to cities, particularly New York, and humankind at large, in the near future. While I personally found the claims plausible and interesting, I was frustrated at the utter lack of any annotation to back them up. After recently reading some hard-hitting, well-researched, and utterly fascinating commentaries on the modern world economy: Eric Schlosser's "Fast Food Nation" and Naomi Klein's "No Logo," both of which present a well organized stream of thought-provoking claims, backed by footnotes, Anne Matthew's novel felt like listening to a well-read savant rambling on, at random, about how interesting her life's work is to her, at least. The sort of person you politely listen to rant away, take a few interesting scraps down to carry with you, and then politely disengage yourself from. In short, she's better heard in the occasional segment on NPR than in an entire novel. The book feels like the product of a researcher who has slapped together bits and pieces of personal notes as they came to her, with no thought towards editing them together or cross-referencing them with source material, in order to push through to the publisher to meet a deadline. ... and yes, this book is totally New York-centric, to an annoyingly exlusionary degree; I'll be gifting mine to a cute NYU student as a gift.
Rating:
Summary: Retread of Previous Books
Review: Wild Night is a retread of previous work about nature in the metropolitan area, including The Meadowlands (Robert Sullivan) and Wild New York (Margaret Mittlebach and Michael Crewdson). Why have a section on Sullivan's discovery of the remnants of Penn Station in the swamps of New Jersey, when this was the sole focus of his book? And she doesn't even credit Sullivan in the acknowledgements. She also never mentions Wild New York, which she obviously used as a source. What's surprising here is that Matthews teaches journalism to students at NYC (a fact she mentions in the book). What kind of lesson is she teaching her students? Pillage the work of others without giving credit?
Rating: 
Summary: tamp 'em up solid
Review: [N]ature's agenda never changes. It will take over, if it can. -Anne Matthews, Wild Nights This is an always fascinating, frequently funny, but ultimately somewhat disingenuous and hysterical look at the renewed interaction between Man and Nature in urban areas generally and in New York City in particular. From peregrine falcons making their aeries on skyscrapers to coyotes on the Major Deegan to West Nile Virus in mosquitos to zebra mussels in our waterways, Anne Matthews examines the various ways in which flora, fauna, viruses and climate are impacting the modern urban society in unexpected and frequently dangerous ways. Much of the pleasure in the book lies in just finding out the incredibly varied species which have returned to the Big Apple, and from the substantial proof this offers of Nature's fundamental resiliency. Less satisfactory is her analysis of why this resurgence of the wild world is occurring and her failure to recognize how easily it could be reversed. For the most part, Matthews falls back on such environmentalist stand-bys as limitations on pesticide use, disruption of natural habitat and the like. But the most likely cause goes unmentioned : Man has basically stopped killing these creatures, and so they are ever more prevalent and brazen. The DDT ban has of course had an impact, just not the one she's talking about. With the publication of Rachel Carson's scare-mongering bestseller, Silent Spring (see Orrin's review), government reacted by both limiting the use of chemicals to kill pests and by protecting "endangered" species. It can therefore come as no surprise that there are more bugs, many laden with disease, and more animals, than there were forty years ago. Even if we don't dismiss the possibility that there were beneficial effects from the pesticide limitations, ask yourself a simple question : if you let people hunt and trap peregrine falcons and coyotes again, how many would there be in New York City at the end of the month ? Though she never approaches this topic directly, Matthews periodically touches on it when she's tossing statistics around. For instance, the U.S. deer population is now over 20 million, higher than it was when Europeans got here. Or again, when Massachusetts banned the trapping of beavers, their numbers skyrocketed from 18,000 to 55,000. Gee, no kidding ? It can hardly be coincidental that the explosive growth of these populations has paralleled the restriction of hunting and trapping. For the most part, the return of American wildlife has been handled up until now as a feel good story in the national media. After all, it's pretty hard at first glance to feel anything but satisfaction at having "saved" Bambi, and it was easy for the, as Ms Matthews notes, predominantly urban citizenry to ignore the consequences when they were mostly being felt in rural areas. But now it's not just the yokels who are being killed in collisions with deer, elk and moose, nor just farmers who have to worry about the predations of wolves, bear, and coyotes. Now all of these critters are tying up city traffic, colliding with yuppies cars, damming up urban waterways, killing pigeons in front of office workers and housewives, and suddenly, we've got a "crisis." It used to be said that a conservative was a liberal who'd been mugged. Today, a hunting advocate is an environmentalist who's had his car destroyed and his life nearly lost, when two hundred pounds of deer or a ton of moose came rocketing up his hood and through the windshield. That makes the problem personal in a hurry. Since Man crawled from the muck, he has had but one goal, to vanquish and control Nature. But in recent years, sentiment and political correctness have made Man a neutral in this battle, if not an actual collaborator with the enemy. Anne Matthews amply demonstrates the degree to which Nature has taken advantage of this one-sided truce. What's lacking here though is a realization that this state of affairs is unlikely to continue. Every Biff and Muffy in Westchester County may support the idea of reintroducing wolves out West, but when those deer in their backyards are carrying ticks with Lyme Disease and when those wolves start bringing down the family dogs, it seems extraordinarily unlikely that the Natural world will be able to maintain its current sacrosanct status. And when the local beaver turn the neighborhood into a government protected wetland, driving property values into the dumpster, government officials won't be able to repeal such regulations fast enough. Projecting endlessly burgeoning animal populations adds drama to the story she has to tell, but Matthews decision to do so seems rather shortsighted. Similarly, in her final chapter, she takes the most extreme global warming predictions and forecasts a future for New York, and the planet, that is so dire that it's just not believable, with continually rising temperatures and ocean levels and declining air quality standards. This overreach is too bad, because up until then she does a nice job of balancing the amusement provided by and the dread inspired by the renewed confrontation of Man and Nature. But, in these closing pages she goes way over the top, on the basis of fairly sketchy evidence. On balance, it's a very entertaining book. Matthews at least raises a number of issues which are destined to consume public attention in the coming years and does so with an observant eye and great good humor. GRADE : B
Rating:
Summary: tamp 'em up solid
Review: [N]ature's agenda never changes. It will take over, if it can. -Anne Matthews, Wild Nights This is an always fascinating, frequently funny, but ultimately somewhat disingenuous and hysterical look at the renewed interaction between Man and Nature in urban areas generally and in New York City in particular. From peregrine falcons making their aeries on skyscrapers to coyotes on the Major Deegan to West Nile Virus in mosquitos to zebra mussels in our waterways, Anne Matthews examines the various ways in which flora, fauna, viruses and climate are impacting the modern urban society in unexpected and frequently dangerous ways. Much of the pleasure in the book lies in just finding out the incredibly varied species which have returned to the Big Apple, and from the substantial proof this offers of Nature's fundamental resiliency. Less satisfactory is her analysis of why this resurgence of the wild world is occurring and her failure to recognize how easily it could be reversed. For the most part, Matthews falls back on such environmentalist stand-bys as limitations on pesticide use, disruption of natural habitat and the like. But the most likely cause goes unmentioned : Man has basically stopped killing these creatures, and so they are ever more prevalent and brazen. The DDT ban has of course had an impact, just not the one she's talking about. With the publication of Rachel Carson's scare-mongering bestseller, Silent Spring (see Orrin's review), government reacted by both limiting the use of chemicals to kill pests and by protecting "endangered" species. It can therefore come as no surprise that there are more bugs, many laden with disease, and more animals, than there were forty years ago. Even if we don't dismiss the possibility that there were beneficial effects from the pesticide limitations, ask yourself a simple question : if you let people hunt and trap peregrine falcons and coyotes again, how many would there be in New York City at the end of the month ? Though she never approaches this topic directly, Matthews periodically touches on it when she's tossing statistics around. For instance, the U.S. deer population is now over 20 million, higher than it was when Europeans got here. Or again, when Massachusetts banned the trapping of beavers, their numbers skyrocketed from 18,000 to 55,000. Gee, no kidding ? It can hardly be coincidental that the explosive growth of these populations has paralleled the restriction of hunting and trapping. For the most part, the return of American wildlife has been handled up until now as a feel good story in the national media. After all, it's pretty hard at first glance to feel anything but satisfaction at having "saved" Bambi, and it was easy for the, as Ms Matthews notes, predominantly urban citizenry to ignore the consequences when they were mostly being felt in rural areas. But now it's not just the yokels who are being killed in collisions with deer, elk and moose, nor just farmers who have to worry about the predations of wolves, bear, and coyotes. Now all of these critters are tying up city traffic, colliding with yuppies cars, damming up urban waterways, killing pigeons in front of office workers and housewives, and suddenly, we've got a "crisis." It used to be said that a conservative was a liberal who'd been mugged. Today, a hunting advocate is an environmentalist who's had his car destroyed and his life nearly lost, when two hundred pounds of deer or a couple tons of moose came rocketing up his hood and through the windshield. That makes the problem personal in a hurry. Since Man crawled from the muck, he has had but one goal, to vanquish and control Nature. But in recent years, sentiment and political correctness have made Man a neutral in this battle, if not an actual collaborator with the enemy. Anne Matthews amply demonstrates the degree to which Nature has taken advantage of this one-sided truce. What's lacking here though is a realization that this state of affairs is unlikely to continue. Every Biff and Muffy in Westchester County may support the idea of reintroducing wolves out West, but when those deer in their backyards are carrying ticks with Lyme Disease and when those wolves start bringing down the family dogs, it seems extraordinarily unlikely that the Natural world will be able to maintain its current sacrosanct status. And when the local beaver turn the neighborhood into a government protected wetland, driving property values into the dumpster, government officials won't be able to repeal such regulations fast enough. Projecting endlessly burgeoning animal populations adds drama to the story she has to tell, but Matthews decision to do so seems rather shortsighted. Similarly, in her final chapter, she takes the most extreme global warming predictions and forecasts a future for New York, and the planet, that is so dire that it's just not believable, with continually rising temperatures and ocean levels and declining air quality standards. This overreach is too bad, because up until then she does a nice job of balancing the amusement provided by and the dread inspired by the renewed confrontation of Man and Nature. But, in these closing pages she goes way over the top, on the basis of fairly sketchy evidence. On balance, it's a very entertaining book. Matthews at least raises a number of issues which are destined to consume public attention in the coming years and does so with an observant eye and great good humor. GRADE : B
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