An erudite, entertaining historical deconstruction of the modern economic world.
A significant work that uses the life of 19th-century explorer and inventor John Etzler to dissect the fallacies of the global mantra for continuous economic growth.
Distilling complex ideas in lucid, easily accessible prose, Stoll (History/Rutgers Univ.; Larding the Lean Earth, 2002, etc.) explains how his zealous protagonist, who believed the earth could support a population of one trillion people, was shaped by the Young Hegelian materialist theories of his era. Born in central Germany in 1791, Etzler promised his followers lifelong ease and abundance based on limitless natural resources. Modern consumers, too, believe that the energy powering their iPods, cars and leaf-blowers will always exist, notes Stoll. But in a time of rapidly rising gas prices and melting tundras, his timely and immensely readable book asks whether unfettered consumption can continue in a world with scarce resources. The author convincingly argues that modern economic theory, with its belief that growth equals progress, is derived from the same materialist currents that inspired Etzler. He takes as a metaphor Etzler’s bizarre invention, a massive, lumbering, do-anything machine called the Satellite, powered by wind, water, a pivot and ropes. The Satellite never worked, because Etzler ignored entropy; energy seeped away as useless heat (caused by friction over long ropes) and could never be recaptured. Stoll contends that the law of entropy, which establishes that natural energy resources are finite and unrecoverable, has also been willfully ignored by growth-focused economists. Unless consumerism is curtailed to a rate that allows the earth to replenish itself, and manufacturing becomes environmentally benign, he predicts that major crises will occur. In the 1840s, Etzler led a group of English emigrants to Venezuela, promising them a tropical paradise without limits on natural bounty, but delivering only destitution and death. Ideas influence behavior, Stoll reminds us, and Etzler’s life has a clear message for us today: “Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.”
An erudite, entertaining historical deconstruction of the modern economic world.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-8090-9506-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Hill and Wang/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An eclectic assortment of women make for an entertaining read.
An exuberant celebration of more than 100 women who shaped the myths and realities of New York City.
In her debut book, journalist Scelfo, who has written for the New York Times and Newsweek, aims to counter histories of New York that focus only on “male political leaders and male activists and male cultural tastemakers.” As the author discovered and shows, the contributions of women have been deeply significant, and she has chosen a copious roster of personalities, gathered under three dozen rubrics, such as “The Caretakers” (pioneering physicians Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell and Dr. Sara Josephine Baker, who enacted revolutionary hygienic measures in early-20th-century tenements); “The Loudmouths” (Joan Rivers and Better Midler); and “Wall Street” (brokerage firm founder Victoria Woodhull and miserly investor Hetty Green). With a plethora of women to choose from, Scelfo aimed for representation from musical theater, law enforcement, education, social justice movements, and various professions and organizations. Some of the women are familiar (Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis for her preservation work; Brooke Astor for her philanthropy), some iconic (Emma Lazarus, in a category of her own as “The Beacon”), and some little-known (artist Hildreth Meière, whose art deco designs can be seen on the south facade of Radio City Music Hall). One odd category is “The Crooks,” which includes several forgettable women who contributed to the city’s “cons and crimes.” The author’s brief, breezy bios reveal quirky facts about each woman, a form better suited to “The In-Crowd” (restaurateur Elaine Kaufman, hardly a crowd), entertainers (Betty Comden, Ethel Waters), and “The Wisecrackers” (Nora Ephron, Tina Fey) than to Susan Sontag, Edith Wharton, and Joan Didion. Nevertheless, the book is lively and fun, with something, no doubt, to pique anyone’s interest. Heald’s blithe illustrations add to the lighthearted mood.
An eclectic assortment of women make for an entertaining read.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-58005-653-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Seal Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2016
Vintage McCullough and a book that students of American history will find captivating.
A lively history of the Ohio River region in the years between the Revolution and the Civil War.
McCullough (The American Spirit: Who We Are and What We Stand For, 2015, etc.) isn’t writing about the sodbusters and hardscrabblers of the Far West, the people whom the word “pioneers” evokes, but instead their predecessors of generations past who crossed the Appalachians and settled in the fertile country along and north of the Ohio River. Manasseh Cutler, one of his principal figures, “endowed with boundless intellectual curiosity,” anticipated the movement of his compatriots across the mountains well before the war had ended, advocating for the Northwest Ordinance to secure a region that, in McCullough’s words, “was designed to guarantee what would one day be known as the American way of life”—a place in which slavery was forbidden and public education and religious freedom would be emphasized. “Ohio fever” spread throughout a New England crippled, after the war, by economic depression, but Southerners also moved west, fomenting the conditions that would, at the end of McCullough’s vivid narrative, end in regional war three generations later. Characteristically, the author suggests major historical themes without ever arguing them as such. For example, he acknowledges the iniquities of the slave economy simply by contrasting the conditions along the Ohio between the backwaters of Kentucky and the sprightly city of Cincinnati, speaking through such figures as Charles Dickens. Indeed, his narrative abounds with well-recognized figures in American history—John Quincy Adams, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Johnny Appleseed—while highlighting lesser-known players. His account of Aaron Burr—who conspired to overthrow the government of Mexico (and, later, his own country) after killing Alexander Hamilton, recruiting confederates in the Ohio River country—is alone worth the price of admission. There are many other fine moments, as well, including a brief account of the generosity that one farmer in Marietta, Ohio, showed to his starving neighbors and another charting the fortunes of the early Whigs in opposing the “anti-intellectual attitude of the Andrew Jackson administration.”
Vintage McCullough and a book that students of American history will find captivating.Pub Date: May 7, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6868-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2019
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