A rousing condemnation of a system bent on short-term gain against long-term health.
A real-life legal document that, absent the requisite love story, could be a James Grisham whodunit.
Acting as an expert witness, former government official Speth provides a background chronicle for the constitutional case called Juliana v. United States (2015), which “is no ordinary lawsuit.” The case holds that the government has known since at least the early 1960s that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide causes climate change. In almost every administration, environmental scientists and federal officials have issued relevant reports, and Congress has mulled over them, so that any protestation of ignorance (no excuse in any event) is simply not true. Moreover, in Juliana, the plaintiffs are young people who “are especially vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.” Some children mentioned in the case live in places such as Hawaii, where storm patterns are intensifying in strength; some have had to abandon their homes in low-lying coastal areas in the face of rising sea levels. Speth, who co-founded the National Resources Defense Council, convincingly establishes that the government knew long in advance that these eventualities were likely to occur: He recounts that Daniel Patrick Moynihan told Richard Nixon in 1969 that the trends in rising temperatures were likely to raise sea levels by 10 feet. Wedded to the fossil-fuel economy, however, several administrations simply tucked the reports into a desk drawer. Others, particularly the one headed by Donald Trump, seemingly took delight in contravening any efforts at conservation and instead opened federal lands to further extraction. Ronald Reagan’s government essentially did the same while George H.W. Bush, despite talking a good game, helped weaken international conventions so that they contained no binding targets. Not surprisingly, Barack Obama “did more than any other president to address [climate change].” Though the case was dismissed in 2020, the Juliana argument is convincing, and even if an appeal is denied, it makes for eye-opening reading.
A rousing condemnation of a system bent on short-term gain against long-term health.Pub Date: Aug. 24, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-262-54298-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: MIT Press
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.
Bearing witness to oppression.
Award-winning journalist and MacArthur Fellow Coates probes the narratives that shape our perception of the world through his reports on three journeys: to Dakar, Senegal, the last stop for Black Africans “before the genocide and rebirth of the Middle Passage”; to Chapin, South Carolina, where controversy erupted over a writing teacher’s use of Between the World and Me in class; and to Israel and Palestine, where he spent 10 days in a “Holy Land of barbed wire, settlers, and outrageous guns.” By addressing the essays to students in his writing workshop at Howard University in 2022, Coates makes a literary choice similar to the letter to his son that informed Between the World and Me; as in that book, the choice creates a sense of intimacy between writer and reader. Interweaving autobiography and reportage, Coates examines race, his identity as a Black American, and his role as a public intellectual. In Dakar, he is haunted by ghosts of his ancestors and “the shade of Niggerology,” a pseudoscientific narrative put forth to justify enslavement by portraying Blacks as inferior. In South Carolina, the 22-acre State House grounds, dotted with Confederate statues, continue to impart a narrative of white supremacy. His trip to the Middle East inspires the longest and most impassioned essay: “I don’t think I ever, in my life, felt the glare of racism burn stranger and more intense than in Israel,” he writes. In his complex analysis, he sees the trauma of the Holocaust playing a role in Israel’s tactics in the Middle East: “The wars against the Palestinians and their Arab allies were a kind of theater in which ‘weak Jews’ who went ‘like lambs to slaughter’ were supplanted by Israelis who would ‘fight back.’” Roiled by what he witnessed, Coates feels speechless, unable to adequately convey Palestinians’ agony; their reality “demands new messengers, tasked as we all are, with nothing less than saving the world.”
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9780593230381
Page Count: 176
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
