by Herb Bentz ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 12, 2016
Awards & Accolades
Our Verdict
GET IT
A radical, ecologically minded proposal to meet the future challenges of an increasingly productive but still unsustainable economy.
Debate about the global economy tends to splinter into those who champion growth and those who advocate environmental sustainability. However, debut author Bentz argues that continued prosperity and technological innovation are compatible with diminished consumption. The chief problem, as the author articulates it, is that an economic paradigm premised upon perennial overconsumption eventually leads to the depletion of resources, pollution, an uneven distribution of wealth, and even unemployment as increased productivity and automation eliminate jobs. The solution is a form of resource rationing—a globally imposed lower growth rate that takes into account the current high-production capacity, relatively high overall employment, and a system that assigns value to both capital accumulation and resource scarcity. The book comprises four parts: overconsumption, unemployment, distribution, and external costs. Our economy both produces and consumes too much and is less efficient and robust when assessed from the perspective of a proper metric (Bentz furnishes a notable critique of GDP as a barometer). Unemployment can be addressed by replacing a capitalcentric economy with one that focuses on labor; one of the best and most original contributions of the book is the discussion of dual time-based currencies that allow for a more efficient delivery of work for basic goods. Also, a fairer distribution of goods directed by the government needn’t be inefficient: “We can conclude that although a centrally planned economy is not a good idea, the universal distribution of a few essential commodities such as food, shelter, and healthcare can make an otherwise free market economy much more efficient.” Bentz’s solutions are aggressively reformist but also offered in a spirit of conciliation; he argues that the goal is not to eliminate capitalism but to chasten its worst excesses. The writing is mercifully lucid considering the technical subject matter, though the running reliance upon Hamlet’s famous Act III monologue—Bentz keeps reformulating the speech to illustrate his principal points—is unhelpful and contrived. Overall, though, the book is a rarity: a legitimately fresh but also politically moderate position that reorients the very terms of the conversation. An original take on the economics of resource conservation.
Pub Date: Dec. 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4602-8095-9
Page Count: 312
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Feb. 24, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Share your opinion of this book
by Charlayne Hunter-Gault ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1992
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
Share your opinion of this book
More by Charlayne Hunter-Gault
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
by William Strunk & E.B. White ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 15, 1972
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
Share your opinion of this book
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
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.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.