Rating: 
Summary: Hated It!
Review: Barbara Kingsolver is clearly knowledgeable about biology, as she reminds us in one of her essays, and about the subject matter on which she writes in this book. But her holier-than-thou attitude and numerous contradictions in these essays were just too obvious to overlook. And actually, they are not that entertaining to read.
In almost all of them, she uses the term "we" when describing all the bad things "other people" do to the environment, but is quick to follow it up with "but I do this...," thus showing she is the perfect steward of the land. There's no way we can live up to all that perfection.
She says she turns down 90% of speaking engagements to avoid wasting all the jet fuel "we" egregiously waste every year. Yet many of her essays were written from exotic places, like Sanibel Island, Yucatan Peninsula, Guatemala, Cost Rica, Hawaii. And she travels twice-yearly between her Arizona and Virginia homes. I'm thinking it may have taken some fuel to get there.
She talks about how she does not approve of harming living things - yet she and her husband, unable to shoo hundreds of scarlet crabs out of the roadway in Costa Rica, drive right over them in a jeep ("Seeing Scarlet"). In a feeble attempt at humor, she mentions how "crunchy" the ride was.
She says she does not allow TV in her house ("The One-Eyed Monster and Why I Don't Let Him In"), but she allows her daughters to watch videos that she has carefully chosen for them. Pardon me, but don't you need a TV to plug the VCR thingy into in order to watch those videos?
In "A Letter to My Mother," she apologises for all her vehement arguments with her mother as a young girl - her mother insisted she was pretty, and Barbara disagreed with her back then. But now, she is sorry about those arguments, because she realizes that she was, in fact, pretty. And my mother and I argued over cleaning my room.
I read all of them thinking that eventually they would get better, but I am sorry to say they did not.
The essays reek of privilege (her homes, her vacations, her working from home), of vanity (I'm pretty!; I'm so smart that my friends ask me about genetic engineering over coffee!), of boastfulness (For years, I've grown much of what my family eats; I never allow my girls to watch TV; I don't eat fruits and vegetables out of season). Now all we need to do to be as good as she is is to figure out a way to acquire as much money as she has so we can afford to be so obsequiously conscientious. If she could have just acknowledged that her best-selling career has made it easy for her to be so choosy, she might have been more palatable. As it is, I got a picture of a truly annoying, self-important snob, and I plan to never read another thing she writes, ever again.
Rating: 
Summary: "I am running out of minutes!"
Review: Like many who have reviewed this book to date, I agree with many (but not all) of Kingsolver's positions, political and otherwise. However (you knew it was coming), I don't think she goes about discussing them very skillfully.
I see it as a fair author's duty to represent the views of those they oppose in the most convincing light. This does not mean that one should support the views of others, but only that those views should be given fair and measured consideration. Then, on the basis of sound logic and clear writing, they can be rejected - BUT only then!
Kingsolver jumps the gun and fails at this task. She makes those who oppose the teaching of evolution in schools out to be stupid toothless hicks. Those who support war or capitalism are equally disdain-able to her. Though I don't believe in creationism or freedom through violence, I don't believe in acting as though these people don't have reasons (sometimes even very good ones) for thinking the way they do. Kingsolver sometimes seems to be working against creating the kind of genuine debate we need to be able to progress as a society.
In addition, the book is rife with contradictions - particularly in the realm of the best way to be an environmentalist. She has a garden in Tucson, but rails against the draining of an Arizona river for irrigation. She says we should all buy local to lessen the burning of fossil fuels for food transport, and then tells us to buy shade grown coffee from rainforest peoples. She wants us to be compassionate to our fellow man, but then she acts as if we shouldn't purchase from the foreign companies that pay some of the world's poorest the only wage they can get. I could list problems for pages, but I won't.
The beautiful writing and use of literary technique make this book quite readable - Kingsovler definitely has a gift for writing.
However, there are thousands and thousands of remarkable and profound works out there that you'd be better off reading. Considering how much time you have in this life, do something else, because as Kingsolver notes - we are all running out of minutes!
Rating: 
Summary: I LOVE THIS BOOK!
Review: I love all her writing and especially love this book. She says things that really need to be said far more frequently and much, much more loudly. People who are having problems with these essays may need to look a little deeper at why that might be. Noone may be able able to say something exactly as one would wish, and it's awfully easy to be nit-picky but the fact remains, and there's just no two ways about it, the world would be a far better place if we were all a little more like her.
Rating: 
Summary: A Not-So-Tasty Organic Stew
Review: I read an interesting essay in this book about a wild Bear that had nursed a child in a remote cave in a mountainous area in Iran.
I find it unfortunate that Ms. Kingsolver (and also the Editors), do not understand that the language of Iran is not "Arabic"... It was humorous that Ms. Kingsolver says that inspite of her efforts, she was not able to determine the fate of the bear because she "can't read arabic".
Furthermore there is no such thing as "Lorena" province in Iran -- likely it is "Lorestan" that is being referred to here (again, indicative of poor editing) - There have been many derivative articles that have now propagated the errors in this essay.While I agree with the spirit of her essay , I find it unfortunate that seemingly educated people use their ignorance to spread falsehoods and streotypes such as suggesting that the Lori's might have ultimately killed the bear. In any case, I read an article on this incident, written by The Herald, which indicated that the bear was left alone and not "killed" by the Lori's, for taking a human child as its own. The Lori's are a nature-loving people that have co-existed with their natural surroundings for centuries. In any case the official language of Iran is Persian (Parsi), which is of Indo-Iranian roots, unlike arabic which is Semetic. I thought this was fairly well known. I would appreciate it if this essay and its author and editors are corrected.
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