An often insightful text with a fresh perspective that’s bogged down by disorganization and unnecessary detail.
Retired engineer Youssef aims to present “new ideas” in this discussion of climate change.
The author’s proposed ideas frame the debate as a worldwide issue. Youssef uses his experience living and working in Egypt, Canada, and the United States and numerous trips all over the world to interrogate the history and contemporary development of energy sources. He pays special attention to energy consumption differences in developed and developing countries, noting that some parts of the Middle East and Africa account for the least contributions to climate change but are the “most vulnerable to its impacts.” He highlights sources of energy, such as wood, that are still used in underserved communities, paying special attention to their health consequences. The book also calls for a renewed commitment by developed countries to create a united approach to addressing climate change, including supporting those countries that don’t have the economic wherewithal to make sweeping changes. Finally, the author states that climate change can’t be effectively mitigated without nuclear power, asserting that concerns about radiation and nuclear disaster are “exaggerated.” Overall, Youssef’s perspective is refreshing. Most debate surrounding climate change feels insular, highlighting individual responsibilities and quibbling over alternative energy sources; his global perspective reinvigorates larger issues at play. He also makes a special effort to address how industries can support displaced workers, how countries can accommodate building new facilities, and how the global community can support developing nations, thus preempting rebuttals that extreme changes would harm industry, the disenfranchised, and the underserved. However, his insights are undermined by meandering prose that spends too much time on finer details of how various energy sources work, their history, as well as usage, production, and export data. What results is a disorganized text that often loses track of its ideas. Furthermore, it uses data from sources with uncertain credibility, thereby muddying its assertions.
An often insightful text with a fresh perspective that’s bogged down by disorganization and unnecessary detail.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2023
ISBN: 978-0963242303
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Alpha Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 20, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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