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SALVAGING A LAND OF PLENTY

GARBAGE AND THE AMERICAN DREAM

A brilliantly informed look at one of the most pressing problems of the '90s—the waste crisis—by an economic development expert (How Can Africa Survive?, not reviewed). Over the course of two centuries, Americans have energetically exploited their natural resources to produce more things for more people than any previous civilization. Because of the rise of advertising and consumer credit, the culture of our frugal, self- sufficient forebears evolved into a nation born to shop. Now, at the end of four decades of unprecedented growth, says Whitaker, we face depleted resources and a rising tide of household garbage, sewage, industrial toxins, agricultural chemicals, and nuclear residues that cumulatively threaten to swamp the material world that sustains us. With convincing thoroughness and disturbing clarity, Whitaker delineates the exact nature of our predicament: Our current waste management is inadequate and misdirected; our time-honored fix-its of technology and private enterprise are not up to the job. Environmental regulation, she further argues, has largely failed us, and even our best science is stumped by too many unknowns. Whitaker contends that the only thing that will save our environment is a complete change of political direction—one that slows our pattern of consumption and growth and initiates rewards for cutbacks in our use of materials. She hopes this will be achieved not by government dictates—which Americans have historically resisted—but through the more readily acceptable route of market incentives. Whitaker's ambitious plan to radically restructure the marketplace as well as our economic assumptions leaves some important questions unanswered, but it is nonetheless a valuable jumping-off point for further discussion. A compelling addition to the ongoing conservation debate, with new ideas on how we might stop trashing the earth.

Pub Date: May 25, 1994

ISBN: 0-688-10130-5

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1994

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A FIRE STORY

Drawings, words, and a few photos combine to convey the depth of a tragedy that would leave most people dumbstruck.

A new life and book arise from the ashes of a devastating California wildfire.

These days, it seems the fires will never end. They wreaked destruction over central California in the latter months of 2018, dominating headlines for weeks, barely a year after Fies (Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow?, 2009) lost nearly everything to the fires that raged through Northern California. The result is a vividly journalistic graphic narrative of resilience in the face of tragedy, an account of recent history that seems timely as ever. “A two-story house full of our lives was a two-foot heap of dead smoking ash,” writes the author about his first return to survey the damage. The matter-of-fact tone of the reportage makes some of the flights of creative imagination seem more extraordinary—particularly a nihilistic, two-page centerpiece of a psychological solar system in which “the fire is our black hole,” and “some veer too near and are drawn into despair, depression, divorce, even suicide,” while “others are gravitationally flung entirely out of our solar system to other cities or states, and never seen again.” Yet the stories that dominate the narrative are those of the survivors, who were part of the community and would be part of whatever community would be built to take its place across the charred landscape. Interspersed with the author’s own account are those from others, many retirees, some suffering from physical or mental afflictions. Each is rendered in a couple pages of text except one from a fellow cartoonist, who draws his own. The project began with an online comic when Fies did the only thing he could as his life was reduced to ash and rubble. More than 3 million readers saw it; this expanded version will hopefully extend its reach.

Drawings, words, and a few photos combine to convey the depth of a tragedy that would leave most people dumbstruck.

Pub Date: March 5, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-4197-3585-1

Page Count: 160

Publisher: Abrams ComicArts

Review Posted Online: Nov. 25, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2018

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H IS FOR HAWK

Whether you call this a personal story or nature writing, it’s poignant, thoughtful and moving—and likely to become a...

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An inspired, beautiful and absorbing account of a woman battling grief—with a goshawk.

Following the sudden death of her father, Macdonald (History and Philosophy/Cambridge Univ.; Falcon, 2006, etc.) tried staving off deep depression with a unique form of personal therapy: the purchase and training of an English goshawk, which she named Mabel. Although a trained falconer, the author chose a raptor both unfamiliar and unpredictable, a creature of mad confidence that became a means of working against madness. “The hawk was everything I wanted to be: solitary, self-possessed, free from grief, and numb to the hurts of human life,” she writes. As a devotee of birds of prey since girlhood, Macdonald knew the legends and the literature, particularly the cautionary example of The Once and Future King author T.H. White, whose 1951 book The Goshawk details his own painful battle to master his title subject. Macdonald dramatically parallels her own story with White’s, achieving a remarkable imaginative sympathy with the writer, a lonely, tormented homosexual fighting his own sadomasochistic demons. Even as she was learning from White’s mistakes, she found herself very much in his shoes, watching her life fall apart as the painfully slow bonding process with Mabel took over. Just how much do animals and humans have in common? The more Macdonald got to know her, the more Mabel confounded her notions about what the species was supposed to represent. Is a hawk a symbol of might or independence, or is that just our attempt to remake the animal world in our own image? Writing with breathless urgency that only rarely skirts the melodramatic, Macdonald broadens her scope well beyond herself to focus on the antagonism between people and the environment.

Whether you call this a personal story or nature writing, it’s poignant, thoughtful and moving—and likely to become a classic in either genre.

Pub Date: March 3, 2015

ISBN: 978-0802123411

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Grove

Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2014

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