Dolin, Eric Jay 1961-

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Dolin, Eric Jay 1961-

PERSONAL: Born January 12, 1961, in New York, NY; married; wife’s name Jennifer; children: Lily, Harrison. Education: Brown University, B.A., 1983; Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, M.S.; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Ph.D. Religion: Jewish. Hobbies and other interests: Stamp collecting.

ADDRESSES: Home—Marblehead, MA. Agent—Russell Galen, Scovil, Chicak, Galen Literary Agency, 276 5th Ave., Ste. 708, New York, NY 10001.

CAREER: National Marine Fisheries Service, fishery-policy analyst, 2002-07. Has also worked for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as environmental consultant and program manager, as an environmental consultant, and as a curatorial assistant in the mollusk department of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University.

AWARDS, HONORS: American Association for the Advancement of Science Writing Fellow, Business Week; Pew Research Fellow, Harvard Law School; Knauss Sea Grant Fellow, U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

WRITINGS:

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (“Know Your Government” series), Chelsea House Publishers (Langhorne, PA), 1989.

(Editor, with Lawrence E. Susskind and J. William Breslin) International Environmental Treaty Making, Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School (Cambridge, MA), 1992.

(With Bob Dumaine) The Duck Stamp Story: Art, Conservation, History, Krause Publications (Iola, WI), 2000.

(Author of text) Smithsonian Book of National Wildlife Refuges, photographs by John Hollingsworth and Karen Hollingsworth, Smithsonian Institution Press (Washington, DC), 2003.

Snakehead: A Fish out of Water, Smithsonian Books (Washington, DC), 2003.

Political Waters: The Long, Dirty, Contentious, Incredibly Expensive but Eventually Triumphant History of Boston Harbor; A Unique Environmental Success Story, University of Massachusetts Press (Amherst, MA), 2004.

Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America, W.W. Norton & Company (New York, NY), 2007.

Contributor to over sixty periodicals.

SIDELIGHTS: Eric Jay Dolin is a writer with a passion for the conservation of wildlife. In 2003 Dolin authored a book about America’s unique national wildlife refuge system. The Smithsonian Institute published the book on the occasion of the refuge system’s centennial celebration. Dolin has written other books and numerous articles on topics relating to nature and the environment, among them a book on the extensive environmental cleanup of Boston Harbor titled Political Waters: The Long, Dirty, Contentious, Incredibly Expensive but Eventually Triumphant History of Boston Harbor; A Unique Environmental Success Story.

Dolin’s book The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was published in 1989 as part of an extensive series of books called “Know Your Government.” It explains the Fish and Wildlife Service’s history and purpose as a federal agency. For example, the agency has in the past launched a successful recovery program for the whooping crane.

The Duck Stamp Story: Art, Conservation, History chronicles one of the most successful conservation programs in history. In the 1930s, Congress adopted the Migratory Bird Hunting Stamp Act. Since then the federal government has been able to add five million acres to the national wildlife refuge system with revenues from the sale of duck stamps. The book is also a reference source for readers interested in the value of their stamps.

The research and writing of The Duck Stamp Story launched Dolin’s interest in wildlife refuges and led to the creation of the Smithsonian Book of National Wildlife Refuges. The 258-page book, filled with pictures by National Geographic photographers John and Karen Hollingsworth, tells how Pelican Island Reserve was established in 1903 by President Theodore Roosevelt as the nation’s first refuge. This launched the establishment of a system that today consists of 538 sanctuaries overseen by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Providing a detailed history of the system of national wildlife refuges, the book also chronicles the many challenges and struggles the system has had to face over the years. Robert E. Engel wrote in Environment that the Smithsonian Book of National Wildlife Refuges is not only “a handsome coffee table book” but also “an informative history” whose analysis is thorough. “The absorbing saga of the growth of the refuge system makes for fascinating reading,” remarked Nancy Bent in Booklist. Nancy Moeckel, reviewing the book for Library Journal, called it “an outstanding book” that “undoubtedly will serve the purpose of educating the public and garnering more support from them.” A Publishers Weekly reviewer commented that Dolin’s work on the national wildlife refuges “makes a convincing argument for their continuance and expansion.”

In Snakehead: A Fish out of Water Dolin documents a near ecological disaster that took place in Maryland in 2002. A local resident dumped a couple of large northern Chinese snakehead fish into a backwash gravel pond in Crofton, Maryland. The fish is a carnivorous predator that not only eats every other fish in its area but is also capable of migrating over relatively long stretches of land. By the time the Maryland Department of Natural Resources poisoned the pond, the fish had already reproduced on a large scale. Apart from the snakehead’s discovery and elimination, Dolin also looks at media reactions. Adrian Barnett, reviewing Snakehead in New Scientist, lauded the book’s “fine combination of wildlife biology, interviews and news material.”

Political Waters chronicles the turmoil surrounding the heavily polluted Boston Harbor and provides a “sprightly account of its history and cleanup,” commented Patricia Ann Owens in Library Journal. Dolin traces the origins of Boston Harbor to 1632, when Puritan colonists settled on the Shawmut Peninsula in search of a source of clean water. Within two years, Boston was settled on the site, and in colonial times an efficient sewer system was designed to cope with the city’s waste. Unfortunately, the sewage—human waste, excess rainwater, and other materials—was shuttled through the sewer system and directly into Boston Harbor. “By the 1980s, the harbor was a stagnant, putrid disgrace,” Owens remarked. Thereafter, in a prodigious feat of environmental cleanup and urban planning, the harbor was restored, but only after a complex political and legal battle, the expenditure of billions of dollars, the creation of a Boston area sewage authority, and the involvement of several prominent Americans, including 1988 presidential candidates Michael Dukakis and George H.W. Bush.

Dolin keeps his focus on the water with Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America. Here, he “compellingly examines whaling’s importance to America’s early growth and wealth,” reported a Kirkus Reviews contributor. The book “covers every aspect of whaling in America, from how whales were found, caught and killed, to the hundreds of everyday articles produced from their carcasses; from how the industry’s fortunes were shaped by economic, political and social factors, to the experiences of the whalemen,” noted Spectator contributor Sarah Burton. He describes early whaling as little more than scavenging for usable carcasses thrown up on the beach by storms, a process known as drift whaling. Soon, however, coastal residents began to pursue whales in small boats, rowing directly up to them, launching their harpoons into the immense beasts, and enduring the wild ride at the end of their tethers as the great creatures slowly died. As whale populations declined near the shore, more adventurous expeditions on bigger ships became necessary.

Dolin describes life on board these vessels and explores the economic aspects of whaling and how it contributed to the growth of early America. He tells about the three main products sought by whalers: oil, which was used for lighting; spermaceti, a substance used in medicines and candles; and ambergris, used in making perfumes. When the discovery of crude oil in Pennsylvania threatened the whaling industry by replacing whale oil with kerosene, the industry managed to eke out a few more productive years through hunting for baleen, a bony substance that was malleable when heated, kept its new shape when cooled, and was used in the manufacture of women’s corsets. The book is “meant to show the numerous ways in which whaling influenced U.S. culture, and this it does extremely well,” according to Library Journal contributor Margaret Rioux.

Throughout the volume, Dolin “has no trouble filling a book with wonderful stories of the whales and the enterprising sailors who hunted them. He does so without moralizing, without donning the modern-day lenses of the conservationist view or tackling the ethical questions of man’s responsibility to the natural world,” observed Nis Kildegaard in Martha’s Vineyard Times. The Kirkus Reviews critic called Dolin’s work a “densely researched and comprehensive portrait, enhanced by fascinating archival paintings and photos.” A Publishers Weekly reviewer remarked: “This account is at once grand and quirky, entertaining and informative.” Leviathan, commented Bruce Barcott in the New York Times Book Review, “is an exhaustive, richly detailed history of industrial American whaling. By the end you may or may not agree with Dolin, but you will certainly know this: Whaling was a bloody, brutal, messy, stinking, dangerous, sometimes lucrative, always high-risk business.”

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

BOAT/U.S. Magazine, November, 2003, “Snakehead: The Best Seller,” p. 37.

Booklist, April 15, 2003, Nancy Bent, review of Smithsonian Book of National Wildlife Refuges, p. 1430; June 1, 2007, Jay Freeman, review of Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America, p. 12.

Book Report, January-February, 1990, Sister Alma Marie Walls, review of The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, pp. 64-65.

Bookwatch, February, 2005, review of Political Waters: The Long, Dirty, Contentious, Incredibly Expensive but Eventually Triumphant History of Boston Harbor; A Unique Environmental Success Story.

Entertainment Weekly, July 13, 2007, Troy Patterson, review of Leviathan, p. 73.

Environment, January-February, 2004, Robert E. Engel, review of Smithsonian Book of National Wildlife Refuges, p. 43.

Internet Bookwatch, February, 2005, review of Political Waters.

Kirkus Reviews, May 1, 2007, review of Leviathan.

Library Journal, March 1, 2003, Nancy Moeckel, review of Smithsonian Book of National Wildlife Refuges, p. 113; June 1, 2004, Patricia Ann Owens, review of Political Waters, p. 173; July 1, 2007, Margaret Rioux, review of Leviathan, p. 103.

Los Angeles Times, November 4, 2003, David Lukas, review of Smithsonian Book of National Wildlife Refuges, p. F9.

Martha’s Vineyard Times, July 19, 2007, Nis Kilde-gaard, “History of Whaling Is an American Story, in Which Vineyard Figures Modestly,” review of Leviathan.

National Fisherman, August, 2007, Jessica Hathaway, ‘“Iron Men in Wooden Boats’ at the Heart of the American Whaling Revolution,” review of Leviathan, p. 5.

New Scientist, Volume 80, number 2422, 2003, Adrian Barnett, “Attack of the Killer Fish,” review of Snakehead: A Fish out of Water, p. 54.

New Yorker, July 23, 2007, Caleb Crain, “There She Blew,” review of Leviathan, p. 74.

New York Times, July 20, 2007, William Grimes, “Beyond Moby Dick; When America Went A-Fishing for the Whale,” review of Leviathan.

New York Times Book Review, July 29, 2007, Bruce Barcott, “In the Shadow of Moby-Dick,” review of Leviathan, p. 17.

Post-Standard (Syracuse, NY), August 17, 2000, J. Michael Kelly, “The Stamp of Approval,” p. D8.

Publishers Weekly, February 17, 2003, review of Smithsonian Book of National Wildlife Refuges, p. 67; April 16, 2007, review of Leviathan, p. 40.

SciTech Book News, December, 2007, review of Leviathan.

Voice of Youth Advocates, Volume 12, number 3, 1989, Joel Shoemaker, review of The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, p. 170.

Washington Technology, June 11, 2007, Nick Wakeman, “History and a Whale of a Story,” interview with Eric Jay Dolin, p. 38.