Goliath takes it right between the eyes in this unique take on the convoluted politics, science, and cultural issues at...
Out of the university and into the streets, Briggle (Philosophy/Univ. of North Texas) brings the practice of “field philosophy” to the question of whether fracking is feckless or feasible.
The author seeks to demonstrate that philosophical practice can be socially engaged and practical. The rush of technology is a case in point. We usually take the technological wager, “gambling on the success of future innovations to bail us out of problems created by present innovations....The question is whether we can establish conditions to make it a fair and reasonable bet. In the case of fracking…these conditions are largely not in place.” Briggle is an advocate of the “proactionary” school, which in the big picture “says that rather than avoid error we should take risks in the pursuit of profound truths and great rewards.” On the micro level, the author asks if the risks of fracking are too harmful to outweigh its development in his college town of Denton. Briggle calls on Thomas Hobbes, René Descartes, Immanuel Kant, and other philosophers for advice, but he distills the complexity of technological innovation into three elements to assure a “fair and reasonable bet”: those most vulnerable to harm must give consent, a system of monitoring must attend the experiment, and the experiment must be modifiable when problems arise. These all come to bear when a group is organized to confront the energy industry and the dangers of fracking. It is a fraught story, but Briggle tells it warmly and cogently, exploring both the interpersonal relationships involved and some of the geological science behind fracking. The rogues are the usual suspects: PAC money, the Data Quality Act, and the merchants of greed who pathetically hide in groups with names like “Taxpayers for a Strong Economy.”
Goliath takes it right between the eyes in this unique take on the convoluted politics, science, and cultural issues at stake regarding fracking.Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-63149-007-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Liveright/Norton
Review Posted Online: May 25, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2015
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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