Waging war against the Earth is an old business, and this book provides ample—and dispiriting—evidence for it.
A Princeton historian examines the shameful destruction of the environment as an instrument of war.
Ecocide, the destruction of ecosystems in order to bring suffering upon the people living within them, is not an international crime—not yet, anyway, although Kreike notes that “several individual states have defined ecocide as a crime.” Aggressor states that employ scorched-earth techniques of battling enemies can always plead military necessity—and so they often have in places such as the grain belt of the Ukraine or the Brabant in Holland, looting what they could carry and then destroying what they could not to deny provisions to other armies or even civilian populations. As Kreike notes of territories destroyed during the Thirty Years’ War, when seed corn and corn for eating were stored and then burned together, an aggressor force can deny another population food for two years—which, of course, amounts to genocide. The author recounts numerous episodes of just that: the use of eco-terror tactics against the people of Sumatra by the Dutch at the turn of the 20th century, the twin roles of plague and starvation in crushing the Inca Empire, the “Famine of the Dams” wrought on Indigenous peoples in South Africa by the actions of the White government, which placed economic development above their survival. “Loss of the environmental infrastructure was disastrous in the semi-arid floodplain. During the wet season, it meant exposure to cold, humidity, and disease. During the dry season, it meant hunger, thirst, and blistering heat,” writes Kreike—and that instance of “environcide” was by no means confined to the floodplain of a South African river, but has instead been repeated in places such as the Amazon basin. Famine, plague, destruction of food and water supplies: It all adds up to a heady catalog of crimes that warring states have too often applied and show no signs of eschewing in future conflicts.
Waging war against the Earth is an old business, and this book provides ample—and dispiriting—evidence for it.Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-691-13742-1
Page Count: 538
Publisher: Princeton Univ.
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2020
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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