A sharp analysis that is bound to be widely discussed, with all the usual suspects, depending on their politics, lining up...
A best-selling anti-globalization activist and author argues that surviving the climate emergency will require radical changes in how we live.
The time for marginal fixes has expired, writes Klein (The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, 2007, etc.). We will not be saved by toothless international agreements, spurious political bargains, outlandish geoengineering environmental groups in bed with corporations or magical thinking of any kind—and surely not by deregulating the capitalist system responsible for the crisis. Carbon emissions continue to rise, and greenhouse gases dangerously accumulate as the fossil fuel industry ramps up devastating extraction. In part, Klein’s narrative is a personal story about her own awakening to and increasing engagement with the climate issue. But this always-interesting polemic is built mostly on her interviews with experts, environmentalists and activists and her colorful on-site reporting from various international meetings and conferences and particularly from worldwide pockets of resistance to corporate bullying. “Blockadia,” she calls these places, where communities have risen to oppose open-pit mining, fracking and pipelines. In them she finds hope for a grass-roots rebellion, a kind of “People’s Shock” where push back against the aggressive energy industry can be a catalyst for advancing a range of policies dear to the progressive agenda. Klein has no time for deniers of man-made global warming, but she credits right-wing ideologues with better understanding the high stakes, the vast scope of the changes necessary to meet the climate challenge. This awareness accounts for their vigorous opposition to the activists’ docket and for the movement’s consequent loss of momentum for the past decade. The author’s journalism won’t slow down the fossil fuel companies, but it surely holds out hope for activists looking to avert a disaster, for a widespread people’s movement that, if it happens, “changes everything.”
A sharp analysis that is bound to be widely discussed, with all the usual suspects, depending on their politics, lining up to cheer or excoriate Klein.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2014
ISBN: 978-1451697384
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 8, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2014
An inspiring, humorous, and thoughtful account of unexpected single motherhood by former LBJ White House press secretary Carpenter (Ruffles and Flourishes, 1970). Raising three teenagers as a single parent is never an easy task. And for a woman in her 70s, suffering from a variety of medical ailments, it could have been overwhelming. Liz Carpenter not only took on the challenge of raising her deceased brother's three children but probably did it better than most women half her age. A widow for almost 20 years and a grandmother, Carpenter was not eager to resume the role of parent. But when her dying brother (a twice-married English professor, poet, and semi-vagabond) asked her to raise his brood, she felt that without her ``these children stared at a future whose door was closed.'' Almost immediately, Carpenter resolved to give these teens the discipline and stability they never had. Household tasks were assigned; homework was carefully monitored; and morality (of a far more innocent generation) was instilled. Because of Carpenter's own lifetime of experiences, she was able to laugh at fashions (frayed, faded denim shorts above boots ``inspired by Nazi stormtroopers'') and antics that might have ruffled a younger parent. Yet she had her share of tense moments. What is a mother to do when the phone rings at 1:30 a.m. from the Austin police headquarters and she is told that her 12-year-old has been caught in a traffic violation? And imagine having to generate an entire term's work of 12th-grade English in four days so that your daughter—who has spent the term reading Stephen King—can graduate with her class. A wise and animated account of raising children well in spite of a particularly large generation gap. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-679-42798-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
A multivocal treatment well suited to the complex and dappled life of one of America's premier modern poets. Members of Bishop's wide circle of friends from literature and the arts (among them John Ashbery, Robert Giroux, Helen Muchnic, Anne Stevenson, Ned Rorem, and James Laughlin) recall with eloquence the poet's intelligence, her reserve, her anxiety, and her peculiar intensity through the stages and stories of her accomplished and troubled life. Born to a mentally ill mother and a father who died when she was eight months old, Bishop (19111979) spent her early years living with family members in Worcester, Boston, and Great Village, Mass. Recollections by her childhood friends reveal a very intelligent but odd personality—shy, and often embarrassed or pained by common experiences. Several contributors comment, however, on the order, discipline, and companionship she found at the Walnut Hill School between 1927 and '30; there she began to write plays, short stories, book reviews, and poetry for the school's magazine. From her Vassar days, Bishop is remembered for her strong mind, arch wit, sometimes taciturn demeanor, and her talent for writing. With Mary McCarthy and others, she launched the alternative literary magazine Con Spirito, which created a sensation on campus and brought her to the notice of the Ivy League literati of the time, eventually yielding an introduction to poet Marianne Moore. After graduating from college, Bishop traveled to New York, Europe, Key West, and Rio de Janeiro, and through several lesbian love relationships, the most sustained of which with Lota de Macedo Soares. Friends recall these adult years as difficult, sometimes drunken, but also rewarding for Bishop as a person and a poet. After her lover's death in 1967, Bishop's life took shape around a series of teaching appointments at the University of Washington, Harvard, and finally New York University. Although a few of Fountain's (English dept. chairman at Miss Porter's School) and Brazeau's (Parts of a World: Wallace Stevens Remembered, 1983) transitions push too hard, the portrait of the poet this oral biography creates is, finally, absorbing and at times beautiful and graced with artfulness.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-87023-936-8
Page Count: 448
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
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