A book full of welcome, practical solutions to the energy—and, consequently, climate—crisis.
A well-considered manifesto for equity in the distribution of power—that is, the kind that fuels our vehicles and lights our homes.
“Our most economically distressed neighbors pay too much to keep their households afloat, and they have been willfully ignored as others move into the clean energy future.” So writes Baker, who gained experience early in her legal career in energy project finance. Along the way, she learned that energy development favors those with political and economic power while even “clean” energy projects are often undertaken at the expense of the less powerful: the people of a small town in southern Mexico, for example, who were being displaced by a wind farm. Baker insists on a course that incorporates “an approach of justice first in pursuit of averting catastrophic climate change rather than one of climate first, justice later.” This justice is largely intended to level a distinctly uneven field. Why do poor neighborhoods seldom feature solar panels? Because, writes the author, the models for financing solar power privilege the well-to-do over the poor, a situation that could change if utility companies allowed month-by-month payment, as with any utility bill. On that score, the financial structure of most utilities, demanding shareholder returns, does not favor clean energy so much as it does cheap energy—if that happens to come from fossil fuels, so be it. Baker proposes decentralized, publicly owned renewable systems that feature the further benefit of being capable of operation in situations of natural disaster: A hurricane can knock out a centralized grid but not necessarily a solar panel or wind tower. The author’s proposals center on “five key areas as ripe for community intervention and structural change,” including moving quickly toward clean energy, developing equitable community energy policies, and easing the “energy burden” so that it becomes affordable to all constituencies—and so that utilities are rewarded for going not just for cheap, but also clean sources.
A book full of welcome, practical solutions to the energy—and, consequently, climate—crisis.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-64283-067-5
Page Count: 220
Publisher: Island Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2020
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
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SEEN & HEARD
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
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