Rebecca Solnit

Junk science might be too generous a label for the way conclusions have been reached about the water of the Colorado River. Without it, Arizona and southern Nevada would still be barely populated and a lot of the agriculture in the South-West wouldn’t exist. But the supply was always precarious and overcommitted, and it is already running out.

For a long time​ before the planes crashed into the upper levels of the World Trade Center in 2001, songbirds had been in the habit of doing so, migrating by night and mistaking the lights high above the city for stars. At least one ornithologist used to stroll along the base of the towers in the early morning, removing small corpses and rescuing the living. A lot of species have been too...

“Birk’s book is better looked at than read. His pictures are a critique of urbanism, rather than a contribution to Dante studies or theology. LA has little to give to Dante, but Dante via Birk has much to give to LA. In Canto XXI, the winged devils of the fifth ditch fly towards Dante and Virgil as they overlook the freeway from a clifftop. There is a cyclone fence behind them, a one-way sign in the lower right, another shopping cart, this time full of the possessions of a homeless demon, and the flying demons carry beggars’ signs: ‘Will work for food’, ‘Homeless veteran’.”