Solomon’s review of answers to big problems displays her expertise and optimism in a pragmatic, inspiring package.
A study of how successful campaigns to curb dangerous chemicals and pollution point to a way forward on climate change.
Apocalyptic despair over the issue of climate change is common. However, according to veteran atmospheric chemist Solomon, it is a waste of energy that could be productively employed. She has won acclaim for her four decades of work in her field, and in this book, she examines how a range of environmental crises have been addressed. She was directly involved in some, such as repairing the hole in the ozone layer; regarding other projects, she has drawn together extensive primary and secondary research. Compiled in this way, the list is surprisingly long, including the removal of lead from paint and gasoline, the banning of dangerous pesticides, and reductions in air pollution and acid rain. The ban on chlorofluorocarbons, writes the author, provides a framework for effective cooperative action. Beginning with scientific research, the process moved to policy changes in a few countries, followed by global agreements and workable regulation and action. Problems bring forth answers, which might be new technology or a change in thinking. Trying to bully people into acceptance of painful reform is usually counterproductive. Explanation and persuasion might be slow but will be more effective in the end. In relation to the climate change debate, Solomon does not underestimate the problems, but she believes that a tipping point for dynamic action has been reached. “If we seize the day within this decade, we can craft a better future for life on Earth,” she writes. “Understanding the basic science, the global politics, key economic factors, and the essential roles of the public and of technology-steering shows that the world is on the cusp of a brighter future.”
Solomon’s review of answers to big problems displays her expertise and optimism in a pragmatic, inspiring package.Pub Date: June 13, 2024
ISBN: 9780226827933
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Univ. of Chicago
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
A smart, rewarding consideration of football’s popularity—and eventual downfall.
A wide-ranging writer on his football fixation.
Is our biggest spectator sport “a practical means for understanding American life”? Klosterman thinks so, backing it up with funny, thought-provoking essays about TV coverage, ethical quandaries, and the rules themselves. Yet those who believe it’s a brutal relic of a less enlightened era need only wait, “because football is doomed.” Marshalling his customary blend of learned and low-culture references—Noam Chomsky, meet AC/DC—Klosterman offers an “expository obituary” of a game whose current “monocultural grip” will baffle future generations. He forecasts that economic and social forces—the NFL’s “cultivation of revenue,” changes in advertising, et al.—will end its cultural centrality. It’s hard to imagine a time when “football stops and no one cares,” but Klosterman cites an instructive precedent. Horse racing was broadly popular a century ago, when horses were more common in daily life. But that’s no longer true, and fandom has plummeted. With youth participation on a similar trajectory, Klosterman foresees a time when fewer people have a personal connection to football, rendering it a “niche” pursuit. Until then, the sport gives us much to consider, with Klosterman as our well-informed guide. Basketball is more “elegant,” but “football is the best television product ever,” its breaks between plays—“the intensity and the nothingness,” à la Sartre—provide thrills and space for reflection or conversation. For its part, the increasing “intellectual density” of the game, particularly for quarterbacks, mirrors a broader culture marked by an “ongoing escalation of corporate and technological control.” Klosterman also has compelling, counterintuitive takes on football gambling, GOAT debates, and how one major college football coach reminds him of “Laura Ingalls Wilder’s much‑loved Little House novels.” A beloved sport’s eventual death spiral has seldom been so entertaining.
A smart, rewarding consideration of football’s popularity—and eventual downfall.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2026
ISBN: 9780593490648
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 24, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2025
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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