A striking manifesto for sweeping change.
How to save life on Earth.
British science writer Vince, a former editor at Nature and New Scientist and author of Adventures in the Anthropocene, mounts compelling dual arguments: Global warming must be controlled, and on a planet beset by fire, heat, drought, and flood, mass migration will be necessary for survival. “Fleeing the tropics, the coasts and formerly arable lands, huge populations will need to seek new homes,” the author predicts; “you will be among them, or you will be receiving them.” In a text that bristles with urgency, Vince counters “anti-migration rhetoric and misinformation” with abundant evidence showing that immigrants make positive economic, social, and cultural contributions to the society in which they settle. With an aging population throughout Europe, she notes, “there’s an economic imperative to increase immigration—to keep the elderly dependency ratios low.” Welcoming these migrants, however, requires a sea change in attitude about national identity. “We need to look at the world afresh,” Vince writes, “and develop new plans based on geology, geography and ecology—not politics.” Vince suggests establishing a “global UN Migration Organization” to manage relocation of refugees and formulate a humane immigration policy. Furthermore, with most migrants gravitating to cities, crucial changes must occur in infrastructure and urban planning. Migrant cities, she writes, must be “affordable, ideally use no more electricity or water than they generate themselves, not contribute greenhouse gas emissions, and not worsen biodiversity loss.” The redistribution of populations, however, will not reverse unsustainable behaviors and policies, and Vince devotes much of her well-researched book to considering bold changes. “The first step,” she writes, “is to decarbonize electricity production; the next is to power everything possible with electricity,” including electrified public and personal transport. She predicts that humans’ diet necessarily will become “plant, fungus, algae-based,” with insects “the most versatile and appropriate livestock.” Geoengineering innovations may deflect heat away from Earth, and wind, solar, hydro, and geothermal power can obviate the burning of fossil fuels.
A striking manifesto for sweeping change.Pub Date: Aug. 23, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-82161-4
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: July 5, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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