An optimistic program for getting out of our current mess, well deserving of the broadest possible readership.
Be kindly unto the scientists, for they may just save our skin—and make us happier and wealthier in the bargain.
Environmentalist and entrepreneur Hawken (Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming, 2007, etc.), best known as a purveyor of gardening implements and as an exemplar of hippie capitalism, brings good news: not only is the world worth saving, but we can correct some of the worst effects of global warming. “Nothing new needs to be invented,” he writes by way of introduction. “The solutions are in place and in action.” The book that ensues is a searching, accessible, though decidedly wonky tour of those solutions. Some of them are self-evident, such as the replacement of fossil fuel energy with renewable means, including wind power (“ongoing cost reduction will soon make wind energy the least expensive source of installed electricity capacity, perhaps within a decade”). Controversially, in the energy mix, which includes such heady things as cogeneration and mirror-concentrated solar power, Hawken and contributors see possibilities for nuclear power, though they caution that existing regulations and prevailing technologies make nuclear a slow-to-market solution. Some of the planks in this broad platform are less obvious but fascinating, such as the authors’ observation that “girls’ education…has a dramatic bearing on global warming”; the logic is that educated girls have more control over their reproductive lives and are thus instrumental in curbing population overgrowth. The book is interspersed with essays by ecologically minded thinkers such as Pope Francis, Michael Pollan, and Andrea Wulf, but they tend to be less meaty than the technical pieces. Trees may be “social beings,” as Peter Wohlleben writes in a brief think piece, but that doesn’t have much to do with the climate change–ameliorating virtues of building with them.
An optimistic program for getting out of our current mess, well deserving of the broadest possible readership.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-14-313044-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2017
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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