An impassioned, thorough look at meat’s role in climate change that presents valid arguments for changing policy and...
An argument for combating climate change through modifying agricultural practices and eating habits.
Seenarine (Education and Empowerment Among Dalit (Untouchable) Women in India, 2004) argues for a meatless diet as a key tactic for reducing greenhouse gases, minimizing weather changes, and improving human health. The book provides a dense overview of current climate science and policy, and reviews the impact of rising temperatures on not only the physical environment, but also economics, international relations, and gender politics. The reduction or elimination of meat consumption (referred to here as “carnism”) is held up as the solution to a thoroughly researched, footnoted argument. Seenarine draws on a variety of research to present a solid case for recognizing meat production as a significant factor in greenhouse-gas emissions. However, while this book’s overall approach may reassure current vegetarians and climate activists, it seems unlikely to persuade many meat eaters to reevaluate their diets. Although Seenarine has a clear grasp of the highly technical material, the prose is often lacking. Grandiose descriptors appear in each introductory section (the phrase “this compelling chapter” appears twice, and other chapters are described as “pivotal,” “discerning,” or “salient”), and clarity often takes a back seat to buzzwords (“Under normative patriarchal carnism, human emotions have been colonized in regards to nonhuman food animals”). The book’s complaints about neoliberalism and hegemony are also unlikely to persuade readers to learn more. Each chapter’s introduction includes a few paragraphs of a cautionary parable set on the unsubtly named Hindenburg Ahoy, a luxury ship sailing close to a massive hurricane, but although these fictional asides offer a welcome break from the forest of acronyms, jargon, and numbers that make up the rest of the text, they do little to shape the narrative as a whole. The book concludes with a series of sweeping policy recommendations but does little to address the practical aspects of their implementation.
An impassioned, thorough look at meat’s role in climate change that presents valid arguments for changing policy and behavior, but in a way that’s unlikely to sway new converts.Pub Date: April 15, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-692-64115-6
Page Count: 348
Publisher: Xpyr Press
Review Posted Online: June 2, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Naughty good fun from an impossibly sardonic rogue, quickly rising to Twainian stature.
The undisputed champion of the self-conscious and the self-deprecating returns with yet more autobiographical gems from his apparently inexhaustible cache (Naked, 1997, etc.).
Sedaris at first mines what may be the most idiosyncratic, if innocuous, childhood since the McCourt clan. Here is father Lou, who’s propositioned, via phone, by married family friend Mrs. Midland (“Oh, Lou. It just feels so good to . . . talk to someone who really . . . understands”). Only years later is it divulged that “Mrs. Midland” was impersonated by Lou’s 12-year-old daughter Amy. (Lou, to the prankster’s relief, always politely declined Mrs. Midland’s overtures.) Meanwhile, Mrs. Sedaris—soon after she’s put a beloved sick cat to sleep—is terrorized by bogus reports of a “miraculous new cure for feline leukemia,” all orchestrated by her bitter children. Brilliant evildoing in this family is not unique to the author. Sedaris (also an essayist on National Public Radio) approaches comic preeminence as he details his futile attempts, as an adult, to learn the French language. Having moved to Paris, he enrolls in French class and struggles endlessly with the logic in assigning inanimate objects a gender (“Why refer to Lady Flesh Wound or Good Sir Dishrag when these things could never live up to all that their sex implied?”). After months of this, Sedaris finds that the first French-spoken sentiment he’s fully understood has been directed to him by his sadistic teacher: “Every day spent with you is like having a cesarean section.” Among these misadventures, Sedaris catalogs his many bugaboos: the cigarette ban in New York restaurants (“I’m always searching the menu in hope that some courageous young chef has finally recognized tobacco as a vegetable”); the appending of company Web addresses to television commercials (“Who really wants to know more about Procter & Gamble?”); and a scatological dilemma that would likely remain taboo in most households.
Naughty good fun from an impossibly sardonic rogue, quickly rising to Twainian stature.Pub Date: June 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-316-77772-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2000
PERSPECTIVES
The memoir of George Dawson, who learned to read when he was 98, places his life in the context of the entire 20th century in this inspiring, yet ultimately blighted, biography. Dawson begins his story with an emotional bang: his account of witnessing the lynching of a young African-American man falsely accused of rape. America’s racial caste system and his illiteracy emerge as the two biggest obstacles in Dawson’s life, but a full view of the man overcoming the obstacles remains oddly hidden. Travels to Ohio, Canada, and Mexico reveal little beyond Dawson’s restlessness, since nothing much happens to him during these wanderings. Similarly, the diverse activities he finds himself engaging in—bootlegging in St. Louis, breaking horses, attending cockfights—never really advance the reader’s understanding of the man. He calls himself a “ladies’ man” and hints at a score of exciting stories, but then describes only his decorous marriage. Despite the personal nature of this memoir, Dawson remains a strangely aloof figure, never quite inviting the reader to enter his world. In contrast to Dawson’s diffidence, however, Glaubman’s overbearing presence, as he repeatedly parades himself out to converse with Dawson, stifles any momentum the memoir might develop. Almost every chapter begins with Glaubman presenting Dawson with a newspaper clipping or historical fact and asking him to comment on it, despite the fact that Dawson often does not remember or never knew about the event in question. Exasperated readers may wonder whether Dawson’s life and his accomplishments, his passion for learning despite daunting obstacles, is the tale at hand, or whether the real issue is his recollections of Archduke Ferdinand. Dawson’s achievements are impressive and potentially exalting, but the gee-whiz nature of the tale degrades it to the status of yet another bowl of chicken soup for the soul, with a narrative frame as clunky as an old bone.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-375-50396-X
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1999
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