Despite being limited in its vision for the future, a useful overview of the science of climate change and the need for...
Smith and Fletcher explain the past, present, and future of the global warming phenomenon that’s affecting us all.
The authors provide a complete overview of global warming and climate change that explains the science involved and provides details on how contemporary global events influence the possibility and potential of action. The book opens with an elucidation of seven key pieces of evidence that prove global warming is real, from rising earth and ocean temperatures to melting ice sheets and rising sea levels. From there, the authors offer a comprehensive list of the consequences of climate change, from insect infestations to conflicts caused by mass migration. They explore both the history of the drivers of climate change and how policy is shaped by current geopolitics. The U.S. has fewer incentives to switch from fossil fuels thanks to its large oil reserves and the use of fracking, while China is beginning to find success embracing renewable energy sources. For efforts to slow the damage of climate change to be successful, a huge amount of global cooperation is required. Smith and Fletcher offer a 15-point action plan for what needs to be achieved, including making changes in agriculture and adapting to higher global temperatures. They forecast that eliminating greenhouse gas emissions and stopping global warming should be possible this century. The world is not moving fast enough, they say, but renewables are increasingly the cheapest form of energy, and attendant technology is constantly improving. If nothing is done, they forecast that the temperature increase could be as high as three degrees Celsius by 2100. The question then becomes what governments, companies, and individuals can do about the problem.
The authors assure us that achieving climate goals is possible, even while preserving economic growth and raising global living standards. The book as a whole works to explain all the concepts the authors describe in depth so it can be understood by any reader, regardless of expertise. The authors offer chapter summaries and list key points that can be used to make study guides. Such accessibility is vital for ensuring that the science is clear and misinformation is quashed, though there is a risk that some readers might feel the book’s tone is slightly condescending. The use of a cartoon carbon dioxide molecule to describe specific topics may help some readers easily grasp the subject, but others will likely reject the idea that such a gesture is necessary. While the book offers a useful overview, it rarely delves into the intricacies of any subject deeply enough to offer any true level of expertise. Its message of hope is certainly well intentioned, but the authors fail to consider many experts’ view that radical adaptation is what this climate emergency requires. The end result is a book with a solid up-to-date scientific grounding but an incomplete picture of what the future may hold.
Despite being limited in its vision for the future, a useful overview of the science of climate change and the need for action.Pub Date: Feb. 13, 2026
ISBN: 9781967213153
Page Count: 214
Publisher: Publish Authority
Review Posted Online: April 22, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
PERSPECTIVES
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.
An Egyptian Canadian journalist writes searchingly of this time of war.
“Rules, conventions, morals, reality itself: all exist so long as their existence is convenient to the preservation of power.” So writes El Akkad, who goes on to state that one of the demands of modern power is that those subject to it must imagine that some group of people somewhere are not fully human. El Akkad’s pointed example is Gaza, the current destruction of which, he writes, is causing millions of people around the world to examine the supposedly rules-governed, democratic West and declare, “I want nothing to do with this.” El Akkad, author of the novel American War (2017), discerns hypocrisy and racism in the West’s defense of Ukraine and what he views as indifference toward the Palestinian people. No stranger to war zones himself—El Akkad was a correspondent in Afghanistan and Iraq—he writes with grim matter-of-factness about murdered children, famine, and the deliberate targeting of civilians. With no love for Zionism lost, he offers an equally harsh critique of Hamas, yet another one of the “entities obsessed with violence as an ethos, brutal in their treatment of minority groups who in their view should not exist, and self-decreed to be the true protectors of an entire religion.” Taking a global view, El Akkad, who lives in the U.S., finds almost every government and society wanting, and not least those, he says, that turn away and pretend not to know, behavior that we’ve seen before and that, in the spirit of his title, will one day be explained away until, in the end, it comes down to “a quiet unheard reckoning in the winter of life between the one who said nothing, did nothing, and their own soul.”
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593804148
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
