Look around, look around, at how lucky we are to be alive right now. History is happening. We are changing the world. So sings Eliza Schuyler in “Hamilton,” a magical musical set in the late 1700s about the politics, … Read more
For several years, I have been captivated by a porpoise. The cetacean in question is the vaquita, a Mexican marine mammal that is shy, adorable, and totally screwed. The reasons for its imminent demise are too complex to explicate … Read more
Aldo Leopold’s “A Sand County Almanac” turns 70 this year. At a time when writing about ecological emergency is emotionally and politically fraught, the “Almanac” is a balm of wisdom and reverence for nature. And few essays have had … Read more
The tap water in Flint, Michigan, went bad more than four years ago, when the budget-strapped city stopped drawing its water from Lake Huron and the Detroit River and switched to a cheaper source: the Flint River. The story … Read more
Why is it great? Fresh from celebrating Earth Day, we’re focusing on the environment and climate change this week at Storyboard. What better than a quote from Carson, who opened many people’s eyes to the pollution of the seas decades … Read more
It shouldn’t be surprising that storytelling was the focus this week on Storyboard: That’s what we do. But I love the variety of the storytelling on offer. A narrative about a recanted abuse allegation. A book connecting the fate of … Read more
The photograph on the cover of Abbie Gascho Landis’ “Immersion” is the first hint that the book is going to be surprising. The image is at once coy and inviting, a puckered pout that is somehow so voluptuous that … Read more
Why is it great? Few authors have written as magnificently about nature as Rachel Carson, and this sentence is a good example. Its strength is not in form but content. It revealed to me something I did not know — … Read more
Ben Goldfarb has found a niche in fish. A freelancer based in New Haven, Conn., he regularly covers commercial fisheries and wildlife conservation for magazines such as Science and Boston Magazine. It’s a topic that can easily get too wonky … Read more
For four months last winter, methane gas spewed silently and stealthily in a monumental leak from a natural gas storage facility into an affluent Southern California neighborhood. When it finally stopped in February, scientists called it the largest methane leak … Read more