A fun, informative read that puts the pop into popular science.
An entertaining illustrated assessment of space settlement.
This book is, to put it simply, a romp. The Weinersmiths published a similar book in 2017, Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies That'll Improve and/or Ruin Everything, and their latest deals with the practical problems of creating settlements in space. The authors, self-described "space geeks” who “love visionary plans for a glorious future,” collected a huge amount of research material for the project. They started out as optimistic about the prospects for space colonies, but the more they learned, the more they understood the staggering resource costs and the complex technical problems. Much of the recent interest in space settlements stems from the shrinking costs of putting satellites into low orbit, but this does not transfer into the cost of moving the needed materials to the moon, Mars, a space station, or another planet. Moreover, research into the long-term effects of low gravity on human biology does not bode well. The Weinersmiths have a good time discussing the difficulty of human reproduction in non-Earth environments, but for a settlement meant to be self-sustaining, it would be a real issue. An even more difficult question involves the laws that would apply, as existing treaties are clearly outdated. Despite the optimism of SF writers and the current crop of adventurous billionaires, the authors believe that space settlements would probably replicate the conflicts and divisions of Earth-bound societies: Humans, after all, remain human. Though the authors strike a humorous tone, they don’t neglect serious topics, and they do believe that one day space will be colonized. However, the timeline is centuries rather than decades, and there must be more focus on the practical realities than on visionary hyperbole. One way or another, this book has a lot to offer.
A fun, informative read that puts the pop into popular science.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9781984881724
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: May 27, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2023
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
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