Tonti’s insightful book shines light into the darker corners of the fashion business and points to new ways forward.
We seldom think about the origin and impact of the clothes we wear, but this well-researched book shows us why we should.
Tonti is a consultant and journalist who has worked in many parts of the global fashion industry in Melbourne, Sydney, London, and Paris, and she has seen enough to understand the numerous negative environmental effects. She believes that the fashion supply chain is a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, with polyester being a particular villain. Resource waste and soil degradation are also parts of the picture. A key issue is that the fast-fashion trend has led to people buying more clothes than they need, sometimes ludicrously more. “Various reports describe how members of Gen Z refuse to re-wear an outfit once they’ve posted a photo of themselves in it on social media—the terrifying amalgamation of free market and toxic psychological forces,” writes the author. One solution is for consumers to choose clothes made from natural fibers that last longer. Individual pieces might be more expensive, but the long-term value is there. Not afraid to literally get her hands dirty, Tonti chronicles her travels around the world to find farms that are trying new methods of sustainable production. Even cotton, often seen as an environmental problem due to the amount of water it needs, can be grown sustainably with careful planning and in the right location. The author also highlights the useful work being done with cashmere, silk, and linen, and she explores the potential of hemp and new recycling systems. “For the imperiled fashion industry, regenerative agriculture presents an intriguing solution,” she notes. Refreshingly, Tonti avoids the ideological, scolding tone often used by those concerned with sustainability issues. Even more, her love of fashion and good clothes shines through, injecting the narrative with an uplifting sense of optimism and purpose.
Tonti’s insightful book shines light into the darker corners of the fashion business and points to new ways forward.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-64283-271-6
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Island Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2022
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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