He illuminates a myriad of proposals for change and presents his own eloquent brief for the United Nations' existence.
In a book that is part single-subject history (think of "Salt" or "Cod," both by Mark Kurlansky), part natural history (think of "Winter World" by Bernd Heinrich, one of Mr. Hanson's teachers), he illuminates a world of fossil hunters, ostrich farmers, aviators and milliners gone feather mad.
Following a shouting contest, he illuminates a sonogram in Mother Cabbage's trunk.
In his work, he illuminates a cold-but-human netherworld where kids run their own lives and revel in an orgy of one-upmanship, conquests, despair, and the grandeur of drug use.
He briefly illuminated a scene of picnickers in a French meadow ($7,500) and a still life ($25,000) with a bouquet beside a cooked lobster in blazing red.
He illuminated the theater with an aluminum heart sprouting his Lucellino light bulbs, with goose feather wings, far left.
And when they won their war they did not gloat in their victory but rather lit candles to illustrate that every human being has a light inside him by which he can illuminate a dark world, so long as he never conforms his own brightness by trying to fit in.
That he did not prefer what they had to say -- for reasons he illuminates with a sustained, subtle and learned argument, something Coulter has never managed to do -- is a writer's prerogative.
By showing the characters in The Year of the Runaways in their "completeness", their illegal journeys into England, their loves, their day-to-day struggles and joys, he is illuminating a path for other people making that journey, as well as his characters.
