Well-intentioned but flawed.
An environmental activist’s travelogue about the 104-day coast-to-coast bike ride that he transformed into a radical experiment in low-impact living.
In April 2013, Greenfield set off on a cross-country two-wheeled adventure that began in San Francisco and would end that August in Vermont. His main goal was to “create near zero waste” while raising funds for nonprofits dedicated to creating a more sustainable world. Before he left, Greenfield vowed to eat only locally grown produce or food from dumpsters, use solar energy to power his computer and cellphone, keep himself clean using natural sources of water or water leaking from faucets or sprinklers, and make do with a small portable toilet. His plan to live cleanly and well also included personal promises to maintain “a positive mindset,” give up swearing, “live 100-percent drug and alcohol free,” and plant “seedbombs full of native wildflowers all along [his] path.” The author chronicled his journey day by day with words and images, many of which appear in the book. He set down observations not only of the many and varied landscapes he traversed, but also of the ways he was able to keep the vows he made before he began his trip. Whether it was turning down opportunities to stay in the homes of people he met along the way in favor of sleeping in his tent or in abandoned structures or not allowing himself to use electricity or running water to bathe or wash his clothes, Greenfield stayed true to his word from start to finish. The author’s journey is admirable and inspiring, but his story, which he pieced together from the online blog he kept as he rode, is more functional than reflective and tends toward redundancy. Each new day is a new episode in a string of similar episodes, with no ongoing personal drama or conflict—aside from the various physical obstacles Greenfield encountered—to render the story more compelling.
Well-intentioned but flawed.Pub Date: Dec. 29, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-86571-807-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: New Society Publishers
Review Posted Online: Oct. 3, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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