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
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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