“Gold Rush in the Jungle: The Race to Discover and Defend the Rarest Animals of Vietnam’s ‘Lost World’” by Dan Drolette Jr. (Crown, 2013)

There is a secret in this world, a very important one that may disappear before we even know it was there.  Vietnam is a nation filled with history and culture, but it is also a unique haven to some of the rarest animals on the planet; it is also one of the few places in this world where new species of fauna continue to be discovered.  Gold Rush in the Jungle is the story of this most unique place.

Dan Drolette Jr. has been a quasi-naturalist; a nature and animal lover since he was a child, discovering a fascination and continuing with it throughout his life.  He has written for publications such as Scientific American, Cosmos, Science, Boston Globe, and Natural History.  His travels have taken him exploring and writing about flora and fauna as far and wide as Hawaii, Sweden, South Korea and Australia.  Drolette Jr. first went to Vietnam in the late nineties and knew he had to return to study and write about his special place, which he did.  Gold Rush in the Jungle is the culmination of all this work.

Vietnam’s jungles have remained relatively untouched, going through a turbulent history and a devastating war; ironically this has led to a somewhat protected habitat for its many species and plans. It has held back development and the advancement of civilization into the jungles, allowing the many animals to live in peace and multiply.  But since the nineties, things have gone quickly downhill.  With the rapid growth in animal trophies, and the use of animal parts as widely disproven medicines in china, poaching has become a very big business.

Fortunately, there are those who are fighting against this, starting up conservation groups and protected places in Vietnam, as well as national parks, one created as long ago as the 1960s with Ho Chi Minh.  It is a very moving story, to see how animals like certain bears are barely kept alive to have their bile surgically removed, or the rhinoceros that used to inhabit these jungles and can no longer be found.  Drolette Jr. goes into the history of this country, talking about certain rare animals that have since gone extinct, but there is still hope that one day they may resurface from these dense ecosystems.

Fans of Jared Diamond’s Collapse and Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth will love Gold Rush in the Jungle, with Drolette Jr.’s easy to read style that sucks you in, opens your eyes, and educates you with ideas and thoughts you have likely never had.  It is a powerful story of a very real place that is like no other, and will stay with you long after you have read the last page.

Originally written on February 26, 2013 ©Alex C. Telander.

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“Mortality” by Christopher Hitchens (Twelve, 2012)

With the passing of popular author Christopher Hitchens on December 15, 2011, the world lost a powerful voice in the writing world.  It began for Hitchens on June 8, 2010 while on a book tour when he was brought down by extreme pain in his chest and throat.  It was then that he was diagnosed with cancer, and began a rigorous series of treatments and chemo therapy to try to get rid of the cancer and bring him on the road to recovery.

It was a long hard struggle, and while at points Hitchens’ health did seem to improve, ultimately the cancer was too much for him.  Mortality is a collection of his writings and award-winning columns published in Vanity Fair.  They are his notes, thoughts and ideas, philosophies on life and his swiftly approaching mortality.  They are unavoidably moving when one considers who is writing down these words, akin to Randy Pausch’s The Last Lecture.

Some might be looking to see if this staunch atheist turned to some divine deity as the days of his life grew short, but there is little in here of that; it is more the words of a man who knows he will soon die, and what that means to him, his wife, his family, his friends.  In the afterword, his wife recounts how he was always the one to have the last word, and now she is doing the job . . . and yet she admits, this isn’t really true, as every time she picks up a book from their great library, in the margins and on the blank pages, she finds Hitchens’ words everywhere.

Originally written on October 23, 2012 ©Alex C. Telander.

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“Prague Winter: A Personal Story of Remembrance and War, 1937-1948” by Madeleine Albright (Harper, 2012)

In this moving true story of Madeleine Albright’s past as a child growing up in Europe, readers get to experience her discoveries of her history through her words, many of them a shock to her, especially with her Jewish heritage.  In a way, Prague Winter is a voyage of discovery and with Albright’s clear and honest writing style, readers are swept away by her prose.

This is the harsh story of a world that now seems unfamiliar to us, when a rising Germany controlled by a vicious dictator saw the fate of human existence in black and white, where only the white were allowed to survive in Hitler’s mind.  As a child growing up in what was then Czechoslovakia, it is a heart-wrenching story in some ways, as Albright tells it with skill and drama, mounting the tension that was very real, as she and her family left their home country for England.  But stories continued to unfold of what was happening back in their native nation.

Albright has clearly done a lot of research for this book, not just on her own family, but on the history and sources of the period, along with many photos from that time, it presents a thorough picture of this part of Europe during World War II and the rise of the Fuhrer.  It is also an insight into the culture of the Czechs, a people who do not bow down lightly and whose patriotism and culture is everything to them.  In some ways, Prague Winter reads like a powerful history book that would make great reading for any high school or college student wanting to learn more about the period; and at the same time it is a poignant biography of these people and of this child that was shaped into the incredible woman that she was to become.

Originally written on March 17, 2012 ©Alex C. Telander.

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