A helpful resource for those curious about the climate-change fights, this work delivers a readable account of a weighty...
A debut environmental book examines the global-warming crisis in the age of Donald Trump.
Produced amid the environmental catastrophes of 2018—including a disastrous wildfire season, extreme heat records, and devastating hurricanes—this work presents a brisk walk-through of the ecological calamities, from declining biodiversity to the dangers of fracking. Written in a matter-of-fact style, the volume promises to “sort through the current condition of Earth as assessed by various global monitoring systems and organizations” and “discuss the major environmental problems facing our planet and its inhabitants.” Burns successfully offers a thorough, well-researched account of the impact of climate change and the political struggles in the Trump era, from Scott Pruitt’s reign over the EPA to the impact of Koch brothers–funded misinformation campaigns. The author intersperses her brief history of global warming and exploration of the present political situation with an impressive selection of quotations from sources ranging from 350.org founder Bill McKibben and Greenpeace to Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports. One chapter takes a deep dive into Trump’s Twitter archive, cataloging his climate-related tweets, from his disdain of clean energy to his love of coal. Other chapters provide brief descriptions of environmental groups and their advocacy work. Burns, who is a nurse, cites a wide array of ongoing litigation—like a complaint in a California court in response to the “Trump administration’s repeal of a 2015 Bureau of Land Management rule that set up fracking safety and oversight standards.” Unfortunately, the author spends too much time summarizing other writings without supplying enough analysis that is substantially new. It is refreshing, then, when Burns writes more personally, as when she recalls her experiences with pollution in Chicago (“I knew we were getting close to the Windy City when the smell changed to something toxic”) and shares her understanding of the public health issues relating to global warming (“I may be better versed in anatomy than I am in atmospheric science, but it’s still an easy line for me to draw from climate change to human health”).
A helpful resource for those curious about the climate-change fights, this work delivers a readable account of a weighty subject.Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2018
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 890
Publisher: Skydeck Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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