Solid pop-science analysis of apocalypses and survival.
A wilderness survival instructor looks at past catastrophes to inform our responses to future ones.
Archaeologists study how cultures and civilizations fall, and Begley, an underwater archaeologist and anthropology professor, begins with three once-flourishing civilizations that collapsed: “the Classic Maya civilization in Central America and Mexico, the Western Roman Empire around the Mediterranean, and the many Native American societies in eastern North America after the arrival of European colonizers.” Disease wiped out 90% of North American tribes, jungles teem with abandoned Maya cities and monuments, and the “decline and fall” of Rome remains a staple of literature and “the most discussed decline globally.” Yet, unlike fictional apocalypses portrayed in countless books and movies, these were not sudden events. Maya culture waxed and waned for centuries, and few Romans understood the forces that were leading to their eventual fall. Thankfully, Native Americans have worked for centuries to maintain what they can of their culture. Apocalypses in Hollywood—and in the minds of doomsday preppers—destroy civilization, leaving a few groups behind, mostly heroic, well-armed men who fend off unruly mobs, usually from cities and thus unable to take care of themselves. Begley points out that this is not how humans respond to disasters in real life. Social breakdown is fleeting, and people “rise to the occasion.” The author emphasizes that the most important skill for the future is not self-defense but the ability to cooperate. After an insightful overview of the fantasies and realities of catastrophes, the author describes what to do if you get lost in the wilderness: These are the lessons he teaches in his survival course. They have little to do with the book’s major theme but make entertaining and educative reading: Staying warm, dry, and hydrated must be the first priorities. While food is necessary, you can survive without it for a few days.
Solid pop-science analysis of apocalypses and survival.Pub Date: Nov. 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5416-7528-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2021
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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