A game-changer that we would be foolish to ignore.
A senior research scientist at MIT sounds the alarm on the herbicide glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup and other agrochemicals.
Seneff takes us on a shocking biochemical journey through the deleterious effects of glyphosate on the environment and humans. The author clearly explains the ever growing body of scientific evidence of the insidious consequences of its continued, massive application across the world. As Seneff shows, the herbicide is the common denominator to a swath of environmental and human health problems, from obesity to autism to toad die-offs. The herbicide disrupts the uptake of minerals by plants and kills the bacteria, fungi, and other organisms that have symbiotic relationships with plants for mutual health. The direct effect on humans is dire, as glyphosate damages the gut microorganisms our bodies use to synthesize the amino acids that build body proteins. This affects everything from liver and kidney functions to fertility and autoimmunity. Seneff is precise about the biochemistry involved, but she is a genial, attentive guide. “I know this is technical but stay with me,” she writes. When she ventures into new, even controversial work, she is diligent in her analysis but candid about such territory: “I propose…,” “may be damaging…,” “Autism is not due to glyphosate exposure alone….” The two most salient—and devastating—points that Seneff highlights: First, glyphosate, which shows up in our soil, water, and even air, is disturbingly pervasive….ubiquitous…nearly impossible for even the most diligent person to avoid.” Second, the agricultural industry, taking a page from the tobacco industry’s playbook, does everything it can to hide the dangers: Monsanto and other companies censor research and proliferate junk science, raking in profits by turning a blind eye to the chronic illnesses resulting from glyphosate use. Comparisons will be made to Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring—and they should be. We can only hope Seneff’s work goes on to rival Carson’s in reach and impact.
A game-changer that we would be foolish to ignore.Pub Date: July 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-60358-929-1
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Chelsea Green
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2021
PERSPECTIVES
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
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
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