A detailed and comprehensive contribution to ongoing discussions about the future of the ESA.
A collection of think pieces about the future of the Endangered Species Act in the United States.
Attorney Baier follows up the examination of the ESA from Volume I: The First Fifty Years (2023) with a look toward the future. Since the passage of the comprehensive ESA legislation in 1973, the listing and delisting of different species as endangered has led to discussions, court cases, and political disputes. This volume, over the course of 14 chapters, features figures from academia and government contributing ideas about where the ESA is going and how to improve its impact. One chapter specifically looks at how to “change the culture within the professional wildlife community” to further the goals of conservation. Suggestions include implementing “pay for success” programs, such as those seen with water-quality programs in some states. Another chapter examines lessons from the 2012 conflict over the endangered dusky gopher frog, which numbered just 135 individuals in the entire state of Mississippi. Another engaging chapter is devoted to a practical workshop on the ESA, overseen by the University of Wyoming and Texas A&M University, that and aims “to develop…tangible action items to improve species conservation in the United States at the state and federal level.” Although the use of highly technical terminology tends to be limited, not every chapter will appeal to the casual reader; one, for instance, includes a passage about a resource equivalency analysis allowing “plan proponents to convert estimated take of individual species into equivalent habitat metrics to inform mitigation commitments.” But the book also digs into specifics about the ESA that laypeople might not otherwise encounter, as in the aforementioned discussion of the dusky gopher frog; the authors assert that several lessons can be gleaned by analyzing the fight over frog habitats and the resulting 2018 U.S. Supreme Court case, including “how to best encourage habitat creation and restoration.” Overall, this lengthy work offers insightful views on the importance of wildlife and the means to ensure its appropriate protection.
A detailed and comprehensive contribution to ongoing discussions about the future of the ESA.Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2023
ISBN: 978-1538180143
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A clearly delineated guide to finally eradicate poverty in America.
A thoughtful program for eradicating poverty from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Evicted.
“America’s poverty is not for lack of resources,” writes Desmond. “We lack something else.” That something else is compassion, in part, but it’s also the lack of a social system that insists that everyone pull their weight—and that includes the corporations and wealthy individuals who, the IRS estimates, get away without paying upward of $1 trillion per year. Desmond, who grew up in modest circumstances and suffered poverty in young adulthood, points to the deleterious effects of being poor—among countless others, the precarity of health care and housing (with no meaningful controls on rent), lack of transportation, the constant threat of losing one’s job due to illness, and the need to care for dependent children. It does not help, Desmond adds, that so few working people are represented by unions or that Black Americans, even those who have followed the “three rules” (graduate from high school, get a full-time job, wait until marriage to have children), are far likelier to be poor than their White compatriots. Furthermore, so many full-time jobs are being recast as contracted, fire-at-will gigs, “not a break from the norm as much as an extension of it, a continuation of corporations finding new ways to limit their obligations to workers.” By Desmond’s reckoning, besides amending these conditions, it would not take a miracle to eliminate poverty: about $177 billion, which would help end hunger and homelessness and “make immense headway in driving down the many agonizing correlates of poverty, like violence, sickness, and despair.” These are matters requiring systemic reform, which will in turn require Americans to elect officials who will enact that reform. And all of us, the author urges, must become “poverty abolitionists…refusing to live as unwitting enemies of the poor.” Fortune 500 CEOs won’t like Desmond’s message for rewriting the social contract—which is precisely the point.
A clearly delineated guide to finally eradicate poverty in America.Pub Date: March 21, 2023
ISBN: 9780593239919
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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