The Earth’s island inhabitants live on the front lines of climate change. What might amount to distressing media coverage for inland and continental dwellers is, for these populations, a frightening everyday reality—despite the fact that they are, on balance, among the least responsible for increasingly harrowing conditions. In Sea Change, Christina Gerhardt does the important work of chronicling the metamorphosis and loss of island landmass as sea levels rise and severe weather patterns become more frequent and erratic. Combining scientific exploration with essays, poetry and other works by Indigenous artists, this book is a profound, unflinching document of places vanishing before our eyes. But Sea Change also keeps hope alive as it “activates imaginings of possible futures.” It’s sobering enough to make readers consider the increasing obsolescence of any atlas we may have on our shelves, but it also calls us to listen to the voices of the peoples whose lives, languages and histories hang in the balance.
Valiant Women is a vital and engrossing attempt to correct the record and rightfully celebrate the achievements of female veterans of World War II.
