Title: The
Fruitless Fall
Author: Rowan Jacobsen
Review:
I've always been fascinated by bees, but Fruitless Fall has made me an
even bigger fan of these little fellas than ever before and also made me
realize just how dependent our society has become upon their health and ability
to thrive. Before reading this book I had no idea that the apple, blueberry,
strawberry, {fill in the blank favorite fruit or any other pollinated crop for
that matter} is just one small catastrophe away from following the path of the
dinosaur. Sure, I knew we were in peril but never realized just how razor thin
that line has been drawn. Scary thought. Scary times.
The author, Rowan
Jacobsen, has clearly done his homework. Through his informative, captivating
and sometimes edgy style he introduces us to the fascinating biological
lifestyle of the small yet paramount insect we've come to know as the honey
bee, a handful of prominent beekeepers across the country who are grappling
with the shock waves of colony collapse disorder and an examination of our
current agricultural system as well as how/why the heck we got to this place as
our nation, as our world, faces the possibility of honey bee extinction, and
with it, the lifestyle we currently take for granted. For me, the take home is
obvious... respect the life force, respect that which sustains us. Do we really
need all the chemicals we're spraying on our crops? Do we really need to truck
bees thousands of miles all over the country for pollinating gigs as the
seasons turn? Or should we, as the author suggests, revamp our entire
agricultural system? I vote for the revamp. I think we've got to get ourselves
back to the garden...
Thanks for this review
go to TH Waters
Author of Ghellow Road
& Letters to Bert
Publisher: Published September 16th 2008 by BloomsburyUSA
ISBN: 9781596915374
Copyright: 2008
Pages: 288
Where did I get the book:
Purchased at a local book seller.
Synopsis: How the disappearance of the world’s
honeybee population puts the food we eat at risk.
Many people will
remember that Rachel Carson predicted a silent spring, but she also warned of a
fruitless fall, a time when “there was no pollination and there would be no
fruit.” The fruitless fall nearly became a reality last year when beekeepers
watched one third of the honeybee population—thirty billion bees—mysteriously
die. The deaths have continued in 2008. Rowan Jacobsen uses the mystery of
Colony Collapse Disorder to tell the bigger story of bees and their’ essential
connection to our daily lives. With their disappearance, we won’t just be
losing honey. Industrial agriculture depends on the honeybee to pollinate most
fruits, nuts, and vegetables—one third of American crops. Yet this system is
falling apart. The number of these professional pollinators has become so
inadequate that they are now trucked across the country and flown around the
world, pushing them ever closer to collapse. By exploring the causes of CCD and
the even more chilling decline of wild pollinators, Fruitless Fall does more
than just highlight this growing agricultural crisis. It emphasizes the miracle
of flowering plants and their pollination partners, and urges readers not to
take for granted the Edenic garden Homo sapiens has played in since birth. Our
world could have been utterly different—and may be still.
Author Biography: Rowan
Jacobsen is the James Beard Award-winning author of A Geography of Oysters: The
Connoisseur’s Guide to Oyster Eating in North America, Fruitless Fall: The
Collapse of the Honey Bee and the Coming Agricultural Crisis, and The Living
Shore, about our ancient connection to estuaries and their potential to heal
the oceans. He has written for the New York Times, Newsweek, Harper’s, Outside,
Eating Well, Forbes, Popular Science, and others, and his work has been
anthologized in The Best American Science and Nature Writing and Best Food
Writing collections. Whether visiting endangered oystermen in Louisiana or cacao-gathering
tribes in the Bolivian Amazon, his subject is how to maintain a sense of place
in a world of increasing placelessness. His 2010 book, American Terroir, was
named one of the Top Ten Books of the Year by Library Journal. His newest,
Shadows on the Gulf: A Journey Through Our Last Great Wetland, was released in
2011. His Outside Magazine piece “Heart of Dark Chocolate” received the 2011
Lowell Thomas Award from the Society of American Travel Writers for best
adventure story of the year. He is a 2012 Alicia Patterson Foundation fellow,
writing about endangered diversity on the borderlands between India, Myanmar,
and China.
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