A welcome reminder that there are things we can do to heal the planet that go beyond useless half-measures.
An irreverent, urgent look at climate change.
Building on a column he writes for the Dutch magazine De Correspondent, Mommers seeks a “much-needed antidote to despair” in the face of the grave transformations that are manifesting themselves around the planet: skies choked with particulates and the smoke from countless wildfires, rising sea levels, declining species and ecosystems. He finds some in the small and personal—giving up meat, for example, in his own life, though he realizes that since he still participates in the worldly economy, “that’s no reason to get all self-congratulatory”; or taking young Swedish activist Greta Thunberg’s advice and giving up flying, since, as she explained, “When you are in a crisis, you change your behavior.” It’s difficult to change one’s behavior, notes the author, when the most powerful economic forces remain committed to a fossil-fuel regime that accounts for the 42 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide that enters the atmosphere yearly—a staggering figure, Mommers writes, so huge that, even if we covered the planet with scrubbers, we could remove only 1% of the total of annual emissions “at a cost of $400 billion per year.” After surveying the nightmarish damage to world agriculture and environmental systems, Mommers finds odd solace in the coronavirus pandemic, which has had the effect of reducing those emissions by 7%. The problem is that in order to keep the global temperature from creeping up by a catastrophic 1.5 degrees Celsius, we’d have to maintain that 7% drop annually for another decade, which probably won’t happen. Mommers avoids hectoring or preaching to the choir, and he does turn up at least a flicker of hope in remaking the economy with an eye to sustainability. “Not enough is happening yet,” he writes, “but a green course is now visible and attractive.”
A welcome reminder that there are things we can do to heal the planet that go beyond useless half-measures.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-982163-13-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2020
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
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
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