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OUR FRAGILE MOMENT

HOW LESSONS FROM EARTH'S PAST CAN HELP US SURVIVE THE CLIMATE CRISIS

An evenhanded take on a crucial topic. While our goose may not be cooked, it’s still time to reduce the heat.

A renowned climatologist and science journalist casts a hard eye on the probability that climate change is irreversible.

There’s good news tucked away inside these data-packed pages: An Earth too hot to sustain life is not likely to come about “in any scenario but total inaction.” The warming trajectory of the planet’s climate is, even by current policies, likely to fall below the worst-case scenarios that have been proposed. Mann, the author of The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars and The Madhouse Effect, suggests that planetary homeostasis is such that the climate is likely to even out and return to its old “normal.” The bad news, of course, is that it’s entirely unlikely that the present economy, still heavily reliant on fossil fuels, is going to turn on a dime—not when there are so many dimes to be made in burning them. That economy is the biggest obstacle to battling climate change, and with it comes “a sustained, massive, billions-of-dollars disinformation campaign.” The campaign’s proponent and main villain is Rupert Murdoch, whose stranglehold on the U.S. is principally confined to Fox News but who has much stronger control over Australia’s media. Even so, notes the author, Murdoch was unable to undo the Australian government’s pledge to reduce carbon emissions by 43% by 2030, largely because mandatory voting led to greater popular representation. Granted, neither mandatory voting nor gerrymandering, banned in Australia, are likely to take root in the U.S. given right-wing opposition. For all its positive outlook, though, Mann’s argument hinges on probabilities and a historical record that shows plenty of evidence of past catastrophes resulting in massive die-offs, and the overarching answer, on the principle of scientific uncertainty, is that we don’t really know what will happen—unless, that is, we surrender to inertia.

An evenhanded take on a crucial topic. While our goose may not be cooked, it’s still time to reduce the heat.

Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2023

ISBN: 9781541702899

Page Count: 320

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Review Posted Online: July 5, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023

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THE BACKYARD BIRD CHRONICLES

An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.

A charming bird journey with the bestselling author.

In his introduction to Tan’s “nature journal,” David Allen Sibley, the acclaimed ornithologist, nails the spirit of this book: a “collection of delightfully quirky, thoughtful, and personal observations of birds in sketches and words.” For years, Tan has looked out on her California backyard “paradise”—oaks, periwinkle vines, birch, Japanese maple, fuchsia shrubs—observing more than 60 species of birds, and she fashions her findings into delightful and approachable journal excerpts, accompanied by her gorgeous color sketches. As the entries—“a record of my life”—move along, the author becomes more adept at identifying and capturing them with words and pencils. Her first entry is September 16, 2017: Shortly after putting up hummingbird feeders, one of the tiny, delicate creatures landed on her hand and fed. “We have a relationship,” she writes. “I am in love.” By August 2018, her backyard “has become a menagerie of fledglings…all learning to fly.” Day by day, she has continued to learn more about the birds, their activities, and how she should relate to them; she also admits mistakes when they occur. In December 2018, she was excited to observe a Townsend’s Warbler—“Omigod! It’s looking at me. Displeased expression.” Battling pesky squirrels, Tan deployed Hot Pepper Suet to keep them away, and she deterred crows by hanging a fake one upside down. The author also declared war on outdoor cats when she learned they kill more than 1 billion birds per year. In May 2019, she notes that she spends $250 per month on beetle larvae. In June 2019, she confesses “spending more hours a day staring at birds than writing. How can I not?” Her last entry, on December 15, 2022, celebrates when an eating bird pauses, “looks and acknowledges I am there.”

An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.

Pub Date: April 23, 2024

ISBN: 9780593536131

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024

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ELON MUSK

Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.

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A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting.

To call Elon Musk (b. 1971) “mercurial” is to undervalue the term; to call him a genius is incorrect. Instead, Musk has a gift for leveraging the genius of others in order to make things work. When they don’t, writes eminent biographer Isaacson, it’s because the notoriously headstrong Musk is so sure of himself that he charges ahead against the advice of others: “He does not like to share power.” In this sharp-edged biography, the author likens Musk to an earlier biographical subject, Steve Jobs. Given Musk’s recent political turn, born of the me-first libertarianism of the very rich, however, Henry Ford also comes to mind. What emerges clearly is that Musk, who may or may not have Asperger’s syndrome (“Empathy did not come naturally”), has nurtured several obsessions for years, apart from a passion for the letter X as both a brand and personal name. He firmly believes that “all requirements should be treated as recommendations”; that it is his destiny to make humankind a multi-planetary civilization through innovations in space travel; that government is generally an impediment and that “the thought police are gaining power”; and that “a maniacal sense of urgency” should guide his businesses. That need for speed has led to undeniable successes in beating schedules and competitors, but it has also wrought disaster: One of the most telling anecdotes in the book concerns Musk’s “demon mode” order to relocate thousands of Twitter servers from Sacramento to Portland at breakneck speed, which trashed big parts of the system for months. To judge by Isaacson’s account, that may have been by design, for Musk’s idea of creative destruction seems to mean mostly chaos.

Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.

Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023

ISBN: 9781982181284

Page Count: 688

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023

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