by Jeremy L. Caradonna ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 2014
A provocative treatment of an important subject.
Caradonna (History/Univ. of Alberta; The Enlightenment in Practice: Academic Prize Contests and Intellectual Culture in France, 1670-1794, 2012) contends that our civilization is at a crossroads: Either we will maintain a business-as-usual approach and face inevitable collapse or adopt the path of sustainability.
For the author, sustainability is a broader concept than just conservation. With social justice and human rights as its “social dimension,” it covers “a broad range of domains: urbanism, agriculture and ecological design, forestry, fisheries, economics, trade, population, housing and architecture, transportation, business, education, social justice, and so on.” Caradonna claims that environmental issues should not be treated separately from political or economic issues. The environmental movement of the 1960s and ’70s was indeed “a transformation of the conceptual prism through which to view the world and humanity's place in it.” Books such as Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (1962) eliminated the idea of the artificial boundary between man and nature, recognizing both as part of the same ecosystem. Equally important, however, was its frequently overlooked counterpart: “the birth of 'ecological economics.’ ” Amory Lovins and other authors posed such questions as, “What is the point of endless economic growth?” and “How can nature, society, and the economy be studied as a single system?” In 1968, Aurelio Peccei's The Limits to Growth (1968) became a best-seller. These and other economists challenged the contention that the growth of unregulated markets was the only road to a prosperous society. Caradonna believes that there has been an important shift in ecological thinking since the 1980s. “Sustainability, in fact, has gone from marginal ecological idea to mainstream movement in a surprisingly short amount of time,” he writes. Now the issue is to define a path to sustainable development to replace globalism and the “reigning venture-capital approach.”
A provocative treatment of an important subject.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-19-937240-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2014
Share your opinion of this book
by Bari Weiss ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 10, 2019
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.
Known for her often contentious perspectives, New York Times opinion writer Weiss battles societal Jewish intolerance through lucid prose and a linear playbook of remedies.
While she was vividly aware of anti-Semitism throughout her life, the reality of the problem hit home when an active shooter stormed a Pittsburgh synagogue where her family regularly met for morning services and where she became a bat mitzvah years earlier. The massacre that ensued there further spurred her outrage and passionate activism. She writes that European Jews face a three-pronged threat in contemporary society, where physical, moral, and political fears of mounting violence are putting their general safety in jeopardy. She believes that Americans live in an era when “the lunatic fringe has gone mainstream” and Jews have been forced to become “a people apart.” With palpable frustration, she adroitly assesses the origins of anti-Semitism and how its prevalence is increasing through more discreet portals such as internet self-radicalization. Furthermore, the erosion of civility and tolerance and the demonization of minorities continue via the “casual racism” of political figures like Donald Trump. Following densely political discourses on Zionism and radical Islam, the author offers a list of bullet-point solutions focused on using behavioral and personal action items—individual accountability, active involvement, building community, loving neighbors, etc.—to help stem the tide of anti-Semitism. Weiss sounds a clarion call to Jewish readers who share her growing angst as well as non-Jewish Americans who wish to arm themselves with the knowledge and intellectual tools to combat marginalization and defuse and disavow trends of dehumanizing behavior. “Call it out,” she writes. “Especially when it’s hard.” At the core of the text is the author’s concern for the health and safety of American citizens, and she encourages anyone “who loves freedom and seeks to protect it” to join with her in vigorous activism.
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-593-13605-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2019
Share your opinion of this book
by Bob Woodward & Carl Bernstein ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 18, 1974
Bernstein and Woodward, the two Washington Post journalists who broke the Big Story, tell how they did it by old fashioned seat-of-the-pants reporting — in other words, lots of intuition and a thick stack of phone numbers. They've saved a few scoops for the occasion, the biggest being the name of their early inside source, the "sacrificial lamb" H**h Sl**n. But Washingtonians who talked will be most surprised by the admission that their rumored contacts in the FBI and elsewhere never existed; many who were telephoned for "confirmation" were revealing more than they realized. The real drama, and there's plenty of it, lies in the private-eye tactics employed by Bernstein and Woodward (they refer to themselves in the third person, strictly on a last name basis). The centerpiece of their own covert operation was an unnamed high government source they call Deep Throat, with whom Woodward arranged secret meetings by positioning the potted palm on his balcony and through codes scribbled in his morning newspaper. Woodward's wee hours meetings with Deep Throat in an underground parking garage are sheer cinema: we can just see Robert Redford (it has to be Robert Redford) watching warily for muggers and stubbing out endless cigarettes while Deep Throat spills the inside dope about the plumbers. Then too, they amass enough seamy detail to fascinate even the most avid Watergate wallower — what a drunken and abusive Mitchell threatened to do to Post publisher Katherine Graham's tit, and more on the Segretti connection — including the activities of a USC campus political group known as the Ratfuckers whose former members served as a recruiting pool for the Nixon White House. As the scandal goes public and out of their hands Bernstein and Woodward seem as stunned as the rest of us at where their search for the "head ratfucker" has led. You have to agree with what their City Editor Barry Sussman realized way back in the beginning — "We've never had a story like this. Just never."
Pub Date: June 18, 1974
ISBN: 0671894412
Page Count: 372
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1974
Share your opinion of this book
More by Bob Woodward
BOOK REVIEW
by Bob Woodward & Robert Costa
BOOK REVIEW
by Bob Woodward
BOOK REVIEW
by Bob Woodward
© 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.