Predictably scary and shocking, but still rises to the level of reference.
Revisiting the consensus on global warming (The Heat Is On, 1997), Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Gelbspan finds the US strangely at odds with a vast majority of both scientists and governments.
While other major industrial powers are pondering what to do about climate change, only America seems unsure that there is a crisis in the offing, notes the author, who goes on to explain in valuable detail precisely how Big Energy, as personified by Exxon/Mobile and Peabody Coal, has, with the encouragement and cooperation of the Bush administration, effectively back-burnered the threat. Fingering by name some scientific “skeptics” whom he charges regularly take funding from the greenhouse gas (carbon dioxide) source producers, Gelbspan suggests readers find out what they have published, if anything, in peer-reviewed journals. The implication is that they are not only sell-outs, but laughingstocks in the eyes of mainstream science. Even other international energy giants, such as Royal Dutch Shell and British Petroleum, Gelbspan offers, have acknowledged that human factors contribute to global warming and its effects are already with us. These first-glimpse events seem more disturbing in their range and variety than even environmentalists who invoked the falling sky a decade ago could guess. Papuan and Polynesian populations, for instance, are already being relocated by thousands from Pacific islands that simply will not be viable as sea levels rise, and researchers tie general warming not just to death-dealing heat waves (Europe 2003), but to droughts, crop failures, tornadoes, and other violent weather events. There are some beneficiaries: the lowly mosquito has a substantial increase in temperate habitat, Gelbspan avers, along with more rapid maturation (added breeding cycles) of its parasites, which already deliver malaria and viruses like West Nile to areas where those scourges were previously unknown.
Predictably scary and shocking, but still rises to the level of reference.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-465-02761-X
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
From New York Times reporter Bernstein (Fragile Glory, 1990), a stinging attack on multiculturalism, a ``messianic political program...[that] does not take kindly to true difference.'' Just as the egalitarian ideals of the French Revolution fell into a dÇrapage (slide) that led to the Reign of Terror, Bernstein avers, so the civil-rights revolution has lurched into a leftist intolerance that is contradictory to its professed pluralistic ideals. Broader-ranging than Dinesh D'Souza's Illiberal Education (1990), this analysis covers not only higher education, but also elementary and secondary school systems, state legislatures, corporations, newsrooms, even the National Council of Churches. All of these institutions, it is alleged, are increasingly being assaulted by pious, often well-meaning ``diversity experts'' who peddle fraudulent visions of an oppressive American and Western tradition. Bernstein sensibly contends that racism, sexism, and homophobia are receding to the margins of American life, not growing, as is often claimed. He neatly disposes of claims that today's ethnic and racial groups represent an exotic new force in American life by noting that immigration was proportionately higher in earlier eras, and that today's immigrants, unlike their predecessors, were constantly exposed to American culture before coming here. Bernstein offers chilling examples of how ``diversity'' has been used as a bludgeon by leftists in battle over high school curricula, sexual harassment hearings that deny due process, the commemoration of the 500th anniversary of Columbus's initial voyage to the New World, and school courses that stigmatize ``dead white European males.'' Worst of all, Bernstein charges, diversity advocates, now comfortably lodged in the intelligentsia, question cultural norms that have historically enhanced upward mobility in the US, thereby damaging the disadvantaged whose interest they claim to serve. A sophisticated, tough-minded examination of the newest fault line in late 20th century American culture. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Sept. 7, 1994
ISBN: 0-679-41156-9
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1994
Detroit's story of an undercover sting operation into the Hell's Angels is quick and breezy but insults the reader with its sketchy rendering of a fascinating scenario. One can sympathize with Detroit (a pseudonymous screenwriter), whose account of a police infiltration of the notorious biker gang, naturally invites comparisons with Hunter S. Thompson's authoritative tale. This sparse made-for-TV product pales next to Thompson's searing depictions of life with the Angels. One day in 1977, Orange County police detective Victoria Seele (Detroit uses fictional names throughout the book) accepts an assignment to ride on the back of Clifford Mowery's Harley-Davidson. Mowery, a hardscrabble biker and convict with a long rap sheet, grudgingly offers to serve as an informant in order to stay out of jail. For eight months, the two crisscross Southern California making undercover drug buys from motorcycle-gang members. Seele, with her surfer looks, awkwardly survives parties at which she is the only one not using drugs and not wearing the typical biker garb (denim vest, waist chains, and strap-on buck knife). During one particularly vulgar Angels party, Seele nearly jumps into bed with two other women in order not to blow her cover. Detroit sprays his text with scare phrases, telling us, in case we haven't caught on, that these people are dangerous, and here Seele is risking her life. Occasionally, we are given glimpses into Seele's supposedly deteriorating home life, but like the rest of the details here, these scenes lack the power necessary to instill even a meager visceral attachment to the characters. The pieces (and sources) for a spectacular story are here: leather-clad bikers, courageous cops, and a backdrop of Southern California's sleaziest bars and dustiest back roads. But for all its drama, this is, in the end, forgettable. (Literary Guild selection)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-525-93671-8
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1994
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