A reasonable argument directed at a lay audience, many of whom have already made up their minds.
A rational if somewhat unlikely strategy to reverse global warming using current technology and without self-denial.
According to Steven Pinker, who contributes the foreword, Goldstein (Emeritus, International Relations/American Univ.; Winning the War on War: The Decline of Armed Conflict Worldwide, 2011, etc.) and Qvist, a Swedish engineer and clean energy consultant, offer “climate change for grown-ups. Rather than starting from baby steps and hope these add up, it starts from where we need to end up and asks how we can get there.” The world’s energy mostly goes into electricity generation, transportation, and heating. The future requires electricity produced without burning fossil fuels. After the usual gloomy introduction—the fastest-growing source of carbon dioxide in the world remains coal—the authors point out that several countries (e.g., Sweden and France) are steadily reducing carbon dioxide production without inconveniencing their prosperous, nonabstemious citizenry. Writers in this genre often prefer solutions that require personal actions (recycling, smaller cars) that have little impact, a frugal lifestyle that most people oppose, or a miraculous revolution in energy storage that is essential to making solar or wind power practical 24 hours per day. The authors argue for nuclear power, and the facts are certainly on their side. Nuclear plants are safer. Aside from producing global warming, the soot, heavy metals, sulfur, and nitrous oxides poured into the air from fossil fuel plants kill thousands every day from cancer and lung disease. Rapid decarbonization of the atmosphere—the only action that will reverse global warming—requires nuclear power. Despite an avalanche of facts and statistics, the authors are taking a “pro” position on a debate they largely lost 30 years ago. Opposition to nuclear power exerts great political influence on most developed democratic nations, and some (Germany, Switzerland) have sworn to eliminate it.
A reasonable argument directed at a lay audience, many of whom have already made up their minds.Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5417-2410-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics,...
A provocative analysis of the parallels between Donald Trump’s ascent and the fall of other democracies.
Following the last presidential election, Levitsky (Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America, 2003, etc.) and Ziblatt (Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy, 2017, etc.), both professors of government at Harvard, wrote an op-ed column titled, “Is Donald Trump a Threat to Democracy?” The answer here is a resounding yes, though, as in that column, the authors underscore their belief that the crisis extends well beyond the power won by an outsider whom they consider a demagogue and a liar. “Donald Trump may have accelerated the process, but he didn’t cause it,” they write of the politics-as-warfare mentality. “The weakening of our democratic norms is rooted in extreme partisan polarization—one that extends beyond policy differences into an existential conflict over race and culture.” The authors fault the Republican establishment for failing to stand up to Trump, even if that meant electing his opponent, and they seem almost wistfully nostalgic for the days when power brokers in smoke-filled rooms kept candidacies restricted to a club whose members knew how to play by the rules. Those supporting the candidacy of Bernie Sanders might take as much issue with their prescriptions as Trump followers will. However, the comparisons they draw to how democratic populism paved the way toward tyranny in Peru, Venezuela, Chile, and elsewhere are chilling. Among the warning signs they highlight are the Republican Senate’s refusal to consider Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee as well as Trump’s demonization of political opponents, minorities, and the media. As disturbing as they find the dismantling of Democratic safeguards, Levitsky and Ziblatt suggest that “a broad opposition coalition would have important benefits,” though such a coalition would strike some as a move to the center, a return to politics as usual, and even a pragmatic betrayal of principles.
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics, rather than in the consensus it is not likely to build.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6293-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
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