Solomon’s review of answers to big problems displays her expertise and optimism in a pragmatic, inspiring package.
A study of how successful campaigns to curb dangerous chemicals and pollution point to a way forward on climate change.
Apocalyptic despair over the issue of climate change is common. However, according to veteran atmospheric chemist Solomon, it is a waste of energy that could be productively employed. She has won acclaim for her four decades of work in her field, and in this book, she examines how a range of environmental crises have been addressed. She was directly involved in some, such as repairing the hole in the ozone layer; regarding other projects, she has drawn together extensive primary and secondary research. Compiled in this way, the list is surprisingly long, including the removal of lead from paint and gasoline, the banning of dangerous pesticides, and reductions in air pollution and acid rain. The ban on chlorofluorocarbons, writes the author, provides a framework for effective cooperative action. Beginning with scientific research, the process moved to policy changes in a few countries, followed by global agreements and workable regulation and action. Problems bring forth answers, which might be new technology or a change in thinking. Trying to bully people into acceptance of painful reform is usually counterproductive. Explanation and persuasion might be slow but will be more effective in the end. In relation to the climate change debate, Solomon does not underestimate the problems, but she believes that a tipping point for dynamic action has been reached. “If we seize the day within this decade, we can craft a better future for life on Earth,” she writes. “Understanding the basic science, the global politics, key economic factors, and the essential roles of the public and of technology-steering shows that the world is on the cusp of a brighter future.”
Solomon’s review of answers to big problems displays her expertise and optimism in a pragmatic, inspiring package.Pub Date: June 13, 2024
ISBN: 9780226827933
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Univ. of Chicago
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2024
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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