New Book Announcement: “Tree Crime” by Melody Kemp

Tree Crime, Melody Kemp (Proverse, April 2022) Melody KEMP — *Tree Crime*, Melody Kemp (Proverse, April 2022)

Arun, a young Mekong upland girl, falls in love and fascination with the forest and all it contains. The murder of a ranger and a frightening epidemic set her against the unprincipled and greedy exploitation of the natural world. The story encourages understanding of the increasing dangers to the environment and to human life that selfish lack of respect for nature creates. Set in a village on the edge of the forest, Tree Crime seeks to portray village life and interactions from an insider’s point of view.

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“Troubling the Water: A Dying Lake and a Vanishing World in Cambodia” by Abby Seiff

According to Cambodian lore, the ocean was once ruled by the king of the Naga empire. The Naga were an amphibious people who made their home between land and water. A prince discovered this underworld when he traveled to an island and met its princess on the shore. Naturally, they fell in love. After the prince proved his mettle, the king blessed their marriage by swallowing the ocean, revealing the land below. “The land born of water was Cambodia,” writes journalist Abby Seiff in her new book, Troubling the Water: A Dying Lake and a Vanishing World in Cambodia.

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“Japan: The Natural History of an Asian Archipelago” by Mark Brazil

It is widely accepted that Japan is a country deeply in touch with the natural world. From wall hangings of cranes and turtles, to carp banners flapping in the breeze, haiku about a frog in an old pond, and folk tales about foxes and badgers, Japanese arts and culture are suffused with images of nature. Moreover, in the present day, tourism is sold using images of cherry blossoms, autumn colors, and monkeys bathing in hot springs.

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Podcast with Thane Gustafson, author of “Klimat: Russia in the Age of Climate Change”

With COP26 and high fossil fuel prices, energy is back in the headlines. And Russia, as one of the world’s largest producers of hydrocarbons, is part of the conversation—most recently, in Putin’s refusal to expand oil production to ease global prices.

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“Klimat: Russia in the Age of Climate Change” by Thane Gustafson

One doubts COP26 made much of an impression on Georgetown University’s Thane Gustafson; his recent book Klimat: Russia in the Age of Climate Change doesn’t even entertain the possibility that climate change can be stopped, to say nothing of being reversed.

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“Environmental Movements and Politics of the Asian Anthropocene”, edited by Paul Jobin, Ming-sho Ho and Hsin-Huang Michael Hsiao

Environmental Movements and Politics of the Asian Anthropocene is a collection of eleven academic essays, by multiple scholars, edited by Paul Jobin, Ming-sho Ho, and Hsin-Huang Michael Hsiao, that focus on the dynamic interplay between political systems and environmental movements in seven of the ten ASEAN regional economies, plus Taiwan and Hong Kong, over the past two decades.

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“Mao’s Bestiary: Medicinal Animals and Modern China” by Liz PY Chee

Liz PY Chee vividly remembers the first time she visited a bear farm. It was 2009, and Chee, who was working for a Singapore-based animal welfare group, flew to Laos to tour a Chinese-owned facility. The animals Chee saw “were hardly recognizable as bears,” she later wrote, “because they had rubbed most of their fur off against the bars of the cages and had grown very long toenails through disuse of their feet.”

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“The Karakoram: Ice Mountains of Pakistan” by Colin Prior

The Karakoram Mountains, located for the most part in north-eastern Pakistan, contains four of the world’s fourteen 8000m peaks and four of the longest glaciers outside the polar regions. Photographer Colin Prior has been “fascinated” by the Karakoram for the better part of a half-century, and traveling there for a quarter-century, and it shows.

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ARB podcast with Jonathan C Slaght, author of “Owls of the Eastern Ice”

The Blakiston’s fish owl is the world’s largest living species of owl, with larger females of the species weighing as much as ten pounds. It lives in the Russian Far East and Northern Japan. It is also endangered: global populations are estimated to be around 1500 owls in total.

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“Owls of the Eastern Ice: A Quest to Find and Save the World’s Largest Owl” by Jonathan C Slaght

In Russia’s far east, meeting a person alone in the wilderness is usually a bad thing. Some recluses in this remote region might be criminals of one kind or another: those hiding from law enforcement or those hiding from other criminals. But when conservationist Jonathan C Slaght ran into a man with “a crazy look in his eyes” and one missing finger living alone in an abandoned World War II hydroelectric station, rather than make a quick exit, he took the hermit up on his offer to spend the night.

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