Results tagged “eatingthesun”

It's not hard to identify the biggest event in Boston (or at least Massachusetts) books this year: that'd be the departure of David Foster Wallace. The Amherst graduate and imposing literary figure took his own life in September, leaving a generation lost without its intelligent, imposing, idol. Wallace gave us many grandiose works, but the man himself will be missed for a long time to come. At the time, we fought the "self-indulgent" label often stuck on DFW, saying:

As you can see, Oliver Morton’s Eating the Sun: How Plants Power the Planet is not a typical science book. We attended Morton’s keynote address to the Fourth Conference on Clean Energy two weeks ago, remarking then that we found the speech “inspiring.” (We also said that this piece would appear on Bostonist last week, but were beset by delays caused by the holiday and runaway FedEx trucks.*) Given 400 pages to expand on that speech, Morton keeps up the same optimistic tone throughout, capturing both hope for the planet’s future and the joy of scientific discovery.