Practicality, awareness, and survivalism converge in a sturdy cautionary handbook on enduring Earth’s new realities.
A preparatory guidebook on acclimating in the era of accelerating climate change.
In agreement with scientists around the world, Pogue, an Emmy-winning science and technology correspondent for CBS Sunday Morning, argues that the deleterious effects of global warming are inescapable. “Even if we stopped burning fossil fuels and chopping down forests tomorrow,” he writes, “we wouldn’t stop climate change.” The author’s overall approach is less damning and more refreshingly proactive than many similar books, as he seeks to educate readers on important topics such as observable weather extremes, disease outbreaks, and resource shortages. Though adaptation measures have been enacted worldwide to counteract the encroaching climate chaos, Pogue’s charts and graphs portend near-future calamities. This urgency makes the book an indispensable resource. The author encourages readers to act personally, arming them with sections on stress relief and mitigating the psychological effects of “eco-despair”; relocation options (aim northward) and household modifications (generators, storm-proofing); and sustainable organic gardening and simple water conservation tips. Pogue also offers information on evacuation plans for wildfires and hurricanes, sheltering during tornadoes, and the possible breakdown of social order (already underway). Given the persistence of the Covid-19 pandemic, readers will welcome the author’s meticulously detailed chapters on protective protocols against the increasing prevalence of disease-spreading insects like mosquitoes, ticks, and other pests that are proliferating in changing climates. Even those who are somehow still skeptical about the planet’s deteriorating condition will find useful knowledge, including action items that can be adopted regardless of one’s level of denial. As he discusses the more catastrophic decades to come, Pogue provides an overview of pragmatic, optimistic, big-idea initiatives by corporations and citizens, which leavens his foreboding message but never diminishes its criticality. It’s a long, comprehensive book perfect for reading in parts, one that consistently reminds us that while it’s too late for a climate rewind, being prepared is the next best thing.
Practicality, awareness, and survivalism converge in a sturdy cautionary handbook on enduring Earth’s new realities.Pub Date: Feb. 23, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-982134-51-8
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Nov. 20, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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