"We need the books that affect us like a disaster. . . . A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us." (Franz Kafka, 1904)
A good story is as powerful a teacher as a well-wrought treatise. Among books for all ages, in all genres, we find gems sharp enough to shatter the ice of ignorance and apathy. The great joy in discovering such gems is sharing them - giving them as gifts, donating them to schools and libraries, quoting them, telling the world about them. In that spirit, we review our own favorites.
REVIEWS: April 2008
Swim Against the Current: Even a Dead Fish Can Go with the Flow, by Jim Hightower, with Susan DeMarco, 2008. John Wiley & Sons, $25.95 hardcover.
Ethical Markets: Growing the Green Economy, by Hazel Henderson, with Simran Sethi; forward by Hunter Lovins, 2006. Chelsea Green Publishing Co., $30.00 paperback.
review by Carol Van Strum
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REVIEWS: March 2008
The Voice of the Dolphins and Other Stories, by Leo Szilard, 1961. Expanded edition, Stanford University Press, 1992, $17.95 paperback. Still available on Amazon and other on-line sources.
Doomsday Men: The Real Dr. Strangelove and the Dream of the Superweapon, by P.D. Smith, 2007. St. Martin's Press, $29.95 hardcover.
review by Carol Van Strum
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REVIEWS: February 2008
In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto, by Michael Pollan, 2008. Penguin Press, $21.95 hardcover.
Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, by Lester R. Brown, 2008. W.W. Norton & Co., & Earth Policy Institute, $16.95 paperback. Available for free downloading at http://www.earthpolicy.org/Books/PB3/index.htm
review by Carol Van Strum
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REVIEWS: January 2008
The Conscience of a Liberal, by Paul Krugman, 2007. W.W. Norton & Co., $25.95 hardcover.
Crime and Punishment in America: Why solutions to America's most stubborn social crisis have not worked - and what will, by Elliott Currie, 1998. Henry Holt, $12.95, paperback.
review by Carol Van Strum
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REVIEWS: November 2007
The Secret History of the War on Cancer, by Devra Davis, 2007. Basic Books, $27.95 hardcover.
The World Without Us, by Alan Weisman, 2007. Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press, $24.95 hardcover.
review by Carol Van Strum
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REVIEWS: October 2007
DARWIN'S GIFT to Science and Religion, by Francisco J. Ayala, 2007. Joseph Henry Press/National Academies Press, $24.95 hardcover.
The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth, by E.O. Wilson, 2006. W.W. Norton & Co., $21.95 hardcover.
Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature, by Linda Lear, 2007. St. Martin's Press, $30.00 hardcover.
review by Carol Van Strum
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REVIEWS: August 2007
Status of Pollinators in North America, 2007. By National Research Council Committee on the Status of Pollinators in North America. National Academies Press, $56.00, paperback, $43.00 PDF file.
Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being, and Why No One Saw It Coming, by Paul Hawken, 2007. Viking Penguin, $24.95 hardcover.
review by Carol Van Strum
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REVIEWS: July 2007
Natural Beekeeping: Organic Approaches to Modern Apiculture, by Ross Conrad, 2007. Chelsea Green Publishing, $35.00, paper.
The Live Earth Global Warming Survival Handbook: 77 Essential Skills to Stop Climate Change - or Live Through It, by David de Rothschild, 2007. Rodale, Inc., $14.95 paper.
A Darkling Plain, by Philip Reeve, 2007. Eos/HarperCollins, $18.99 hardcover.
review by Carol Van Strum
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REVIEWS: June 2007
Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations, by David R. Montgomery, 2007. University of California Press, $24.95 hardcover.
There's a Hair In My Dirt: A Worm's Story, by Gary Larson, 1998. HarperCollins, $12.99, paperback. For all ages.
The Citizen-Powered Energy Handbook: Community Solutions to a Global Crisis, by Greg Pahl, 2007. Chelsea Green Publishing Company, $21.95 paper.
review by Carol Van Strum
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REVIEWS: April 2007
The Last Forest: The Amazon in the Age of Globalization, by Mark London and Brian Kelly, 2007. Random House, $25.95 hardcover.
Just Call Me Mike: A Journey to Actor and Activist, by Mike Farrell. Akashic Books/RDV Books, 2007. $21.95 hardcover.
Lost City Radio, by Daniel Alarcón, 2007. Harper Collins, $24.95, hardcover.
review by Carol Van Strum
"Ultimately, everything was all about people."
-- Terry Pratchett, Going Postal |
Psychopaths and hypocrites aside, the way we treat each other generally reflects our attitudes toward the world, and vice-versa. Exploitation, injustice, and war are so intertwined that saving the planet, or a polar bear or butterfly, is an exercise in futility without changes in our most fundamental attitudes and behavior toward each other.
The first and hardest step in this direction, as Maurice Sendak's fabled Pierre learned the hard way, is simply and genuinely to care. Three new books offer different approaches to this imperative.
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REVIEWS: March 2007
Useless Arithmetic: Why Environmental Scientists Can't Predict the Future, by Orrin H. Pilkey & Linda Pilkey-Jarvis. Columbia University Press, 2007. $29.50
Bellwether, by Connie Willis. 1996. Bantam Books, $7.99, paper.
The Futurist, by James P. Othmer, 2006. Doubleday, $23.95. Paperback release June, 2007, $13.95.
review by Carol Van Strum
"The future, wave or no wave, seems to me no unified dream but a mince pie, long in the baking, never quite done."
E. B. White, One Man's Meat, 1940, 1950
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The oracles of Delphi or the benign forecasts of the Old Farmer's Almanac may seem quaint anachronisms in the Age of Science and Technology, but the fact is that from regulatory policies to political and military strategy, our society relies more than ever before on prognostications that are no more accurate than chicken entrails. The difference is that we rarely, if ever, see the guts of predictions that dictate our lives. Exposing them is a job for both science and satire.
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REVIEWS: January 2007
Capitalism 3.0: A Guide to Reclaiming the Commons, by Peter Barnes, 2006. Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., $22.95, hardcover.
Hell and High Water: Global Warming - the Solution and the Politics - and What We Should Do, by Joseph Romm, 2007. William Morrow, $24.95, hardcover.
review by Carol Van Strum
Now that you're here,
the word of the Lorax seems perfectly clear.
UNLESS someone like you
cares a whole awful lot,
nothing is going to get better.
It's not.
from The Lorax, by Dr. Seuss, 1971
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As Earth's atmosphere tips past one threshold after another toward catastrophe, climate change discussions desperately need to go beyond singing to the choir. To address this need, here are a book on economics inspired by The Lorax and another debunking the spurious arguments, point by point, of right-wing nay-sayers.
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REVIEWS: CHRISTMAS ROUNDUP
(December 2006)
An Inconvenient Truth: The planetary emergency of global warming and what we can do about it, by Al Gore. Rodale, 2006. $21.95 paper.
Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and salvos from an American Iconoclast, by Edward Abbey, edited and with introduction by David Petersen. Milkweed Editions, 2006. $24.95 hardcover.
And three by Carl Hiaasen:
Nature Girl, Knopf, 2006. $25.95 hardcover
Hoot, Knopf, 2004. $8.95 paper
Flush, Knopf, 2005. $16.95 hardcover
review by Carol Van Strum
Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth gives us the sad truth of global warming in a volume any third-grader can understand. This is a book not to keep but to give - or to wear out reading aloud in laundromat or bus station to anyone who'll listen.
And because saving the world can drive you nuts, or seriously impair your health, frequent doses of laugh-out-loud comic relief are recommended for all ages. Edward Abbey and Carl Hiaasen admirably meet this requirement.
DO-IT-YOURSELF DEMOCRACY
(October 2006)
Democracy's Edge: Choosing to Save Our Country by Bringing Democracy Back to Life, by Frances Moore Lappé. Jossey-Bass/Wiley, 2006, $24.95.
review by Carol Van Strum
If you could give a single gift to everyone you know, Frances Moore Lappé's Democracy's Edge should be it. The best possible aid is a tool to enable others to help themselves; in that spirit, Lappé provides not only hope and practical guidance, but exciting real-life stories of effective grass-roots actions on a wealth of different issues.
Adapting Buildings
(August 2006)
Adapting Buildings and Cities for Climate Change:
a 21st Century survival guide, by Sue Roaf, David Chrichton, & Fergus Nicol. Architectural Press (Elsevier), 2005. $48.95 paper.
review by Carol Van Strum
Developing alternative energy sources and reducing greenhouse gases are therefore a given, but even if we could achieve total replacement of fossil fuels overnight, global changes already set in motion would continue for a century or more. Adaptation is thus our only hope for survival as a species.
The European Dream
(July 2006)
The European Dream: How Europe's Vision of the Future is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream, by Jeremy Rifkin, 2004, Tarcher/Penguin $25.95 hardcover; $15.95 paper.
review by Carol Van Strum
Perceived as a threat to U.S. commerce, the European Union is rarely portrayed favorably or accurately in our media. The result is that few Americans have a clue what the EU is all about. Filling this serious gap, Jeremy Rifkin's The European Dream might well be subtitled -- What U.S. business doesn't want you to know about the European Union.
The Flood of Awful News
(April 2006)
Life is a Miracle: An Essay Against Modern Superstition, by Wendell Berry, 2000. Counterpoint, $14.00 paper.
Given: New Poems, by Wendell Berry, 2006. Shoemaker Hoard, $14.00, paper.
High Tide in Tucson: Essays from Now or Never, by Barbara Kingsolver, illustrations by Paul Mirocha, 1995. Harper Collins, $13.00, paper.
Small Wonder, by Barbara Kingsolver, illustrations by Paul Mirocha, 2002. Harper Collins, $13.95 paper.
reviews by Carol Van Strum
Global warming, mass extinctions, endless wars, poverty, vanishing aquifers, epidemics, peak oil - the flood of awful news from all quarters is overwhelming. Lest we succumb to despair, here are four books to savor and revisit as needed. Barbara Kingsolver and Wendell Berry re-affirm the faded priorities of empathy, propriety, and garden-variety common sense in both our personal lives and the language of human discourse.
Need for Drastic Action
(February 2006)
Winning the Oil Endgame: Innovation for Profits, Jobs, and Security, by Amory B. Lovins, E. Kyle Datta, Odd-Even Bustnes, Jonathan G. Koomey, & Nathan J. Glasgow. 2004. Rocky Mountain Institute, $40.00
Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble, by Lester R. Brown, 2006. W.W. Norton & Co., $16.95, paper
reviews by Carol Van Strum
Winning the Oil Endgame and Plan B 2.0 stress the urgent need for drastic action to avert catastrophe. We have the necessary technology and knowledge to do so. It will cost $161 billion, one-sixth of the world's total military budget, and require total restructuring of the global economy at record speed, because the mechanisms for preventing disaster must be in place with a very few years.
Brimming the Poisoned Well
(January 2006)
Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Oil Shock and the World Economy, by Matthew R. Simmons, 2005. John Wiley & Sons. $24.95
The Growth Illusion: How economic growth has enriched the few, impoverished the many, and endangered the planet, by Richard Douthwaite, 1999. New Society Publishers. $20.95
Wolves Eat Dogs, by Martin Cruz Smith, 2004. Pocket Books, $14.00.
reviews by Carol Van Strum
In matters of suicidal energy policies, runaway growth, and overpopulation, we are overdue for crisis intervention. Together, these three books are a healthy start.
The Precautionary Principle as Historical Imperative
Note: Scientists at the 1998 Wingspread Conference, alarmed at the magnitude of world-wide environmental degradation, proposed a radical new principle: "Where an activity raises threats of harm to the environment or human health, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically. In this context, the proponent of an activity, rather than the public, bears the burden of proof."
The sensible proposal to look before we leap is hardly new. The history of civilization is a never-ending story of humanity's failure to heed its own hard-won wisdom.
A Short History of Progress, by Ronald Wright. 2004. Carroll & Graf, paper. $14.95 --- a review by Carol Van Strum
For those who have so long fought isolated, never-ending battles against disparate elements of environmental degradation, Wright's small, powerful book places our struggles clearly in their larger context: nothing less than the fate of civilization itself.
The Hungry City Chronicles series, by Philip Reeve. Harper Collins --- a review by Carol Van Strum
Mortal Engines (2003), paper, $6.99
Predator's Gold (2004), hardcover $16.99, paper $7.99 available February 2006
Infernal Devices (2006) hardcover $16.99 release date June, 2006.
One of the most enduring themes, retold in lively variations world-wide, evokes the precautionary principle so eloquently articulated by Ronald Wright. We know it best as a Disney cartoon of the Sorcerer's Apprentice, but the moral - take heed lest the blessing become a curse, the wonderful tool unleash disaster -- is likely as old as the first cave dweller to burn his bed making fire.
