In a genre rife with forecasts of doom and exhortations in favor of frugal living, Prentiss provides impressive evidence...
A surprisingly optimistic analysis of the world’s unsustainable, wasteful energy consumption.
Solving the energy crisis through self-denial is a nonstarter, writes Prentiss (Physics/Harvard Univ.), but it may be unnecessary since “recent U.S. data suggest that increases in energy efficiency and changes in technology mean that decreases in energy use may not require sacrifices.” In fact, “some energy-saving changes have been accompanied by life-style improvements.” Per-capita energy use in the United States has held steady since 1960. The amount of energy required to create a dollar of gross domestic product has fallen steadily and is predicted to drop by another half by 2040. Further improvements are inevitable, and scientific laws do not favor the continued burning of fossil fuels. The second law of thermodynamics guarantees enormous inefficiency in any cyclic heat engine, which includes fossil fuel–burning power plants and the internal combustion engine. An automobile wastes 80-85 percent of gasoline’s energy, but electric motors can be over 99 percent efficient. In the middle chapters, Prentiss explains the design, operation and future role of power sources from water, wind, sun and other renewables. Dense with charts, graphs and equations, these chapters will be difficult going for many general readers but illuminating to those who persist. Ultimately, Prentiss states bluntly that wind power can supply 100 percent of America’s energy needs. Generating power from renewables is already practicable, but wind and sun are often absent, so storage and distribution remain the main barriers. Confident that this is temporary, Prentiss delivers a detailed, definitely not dumbed-down explanation of possible solutions, concluding, “we are on the cusp of an energy revolution, which might significantly improve the lives of almost everyone on earth if only we have the courage to seize the opportunity.”
In a genre rife with forecasts of doom and exhortations in favor of frugal living, Prentiss provides impressive evidence that things may work out just fine.Pub Date: Feb. 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-674-72502-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Belknap/Harvard Univ.
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2014
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
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