A century uplifted, a century crushed in The Third Horseman

From the week of June 9th, 2014

Finding truth in history is a difficult and often treacherous pursuit. Empowered by our hunger to understand our ancestors, and to learn from the mistakes they made, we read into the bits and pieces we are able to unearth about them narratives which are invariably distorted by our own values, our own biases. We savage the Catholic church for its backwards treatment of Galileo; we cringe at the murderous zeal of Henry VIII; we sadly shake our heads over the unimaginable loss of life during its wars and famines. And for most of us, this is done without context, without comprehending the deeply entrenched customs that motivated actions that, to us, range from abhorrent to bewildering.

This is why history cannot be reduced to narratives. It is the gestalt of countless lives, across countless generations, making contributions to countless cultural constructs. History is like the weather. It is not moved or shaken by any one disturbance. It is a complex system whose constant shifts require constant re-evaluation. And it is an acknowledgement of this underlying reality that makes this micro-history from William Rosen so captivating.

Popularized by opponents of Climate Change, who deploy it as ammunition against acknowledgement of the Anthropocene, the Medieval Warming Period was a roughly 400-year warming of the European climate that began in the tenth century and ended dramatically in the early years of the 14th. Between, Europe and the British Isles, experienced a significant increase in temperatures which not only expanded the total acreage of cultivatable land, but allowed for the existence of crops in areas that formerly could not support them. Northern England, for instance, possessed fruitful vineyards during this uptick. And as has been true since the dawn of civilization, more available food allows the population to expand, in this case, by tens of millions.

This expanse in the Carrying Capacity of Europe would come to have dire consequences in the 1300s when, with the end of the Medieval Warming Period, widespread flooding in the 1320s destroyed much of the continental harvests. The shrinking of the food supply led to starvation, famine and death. With scientific thought in its infancy, and the ruling powers too preoccupied with their own disputes to engineer solutions, these crippling conditions killed many, in peace and in war and authored more than a century of anguish highlighted by plague and darkness.

A history of both the climate and the people who endured it, The Third Horseman is a gripping examination of the Medieval Warming Period, the systemic forces that likely caused it and the human events that characterized it. From the Norman Invasion of England to the Scottish wars of Independence, from the floods in western Europe to the barley crops in Norway, Mr. Rosen gathers together the disparate, dangling threads of this consequential time and weaves them into an entertaining tapestry that is as enlightening as it is terrifying.

From the perch of modernity, where we possess technologies to literally remake the face of our planet, we rarely think about fundamental elements like food that are necessary for not only human survival but the continuance of human civilization. Today, food is not only bountiful, it is ubiquitous, so much so that some have fetishized its consumption while the rest take its presence for granted. Not so in Medieval Europe where food's cultivation was a difficult and arduous process, requiring a significant percentage of the available human capital to actualize, leaving margins for error razor thin.

But while, thanks to advancements in farming technology in specific and science in general, we have more margin for error, it is swiftly shrinking. Seven-billion humans now walk our planet, a many-fold increase over Medieval Europe. Should harvests fail thanks to our reckless distortion of the climate system, untold millions will die and plunge our civilization into the greatest famine we've ever known. And given that the failure of past civilizations is often caused by the social upheavals that result from the scarcity of basic necessities like food and water, it is not difficult to imagine that such a disruption would be the end of us too.

Mr. Rosen, however, is neither a nag nor a pessimist. The Third Horseman is not a polemic against human wastefulness, nor climate skeptics. It is, rather, the study of the disruption of life during consequential changes in those fundamental things we take for granted. It does not prod us to change our ways, nor does it seek to blame us for our faults. It merely invites us to remember how, despite our science and our liberation, despite our triumphs and our beliefs, we are still, in totality, reliant upon Earth and its climate to sustain us, systems of which our knowledge is laughably incomplete. Whatever step we take as a result of this key insight is ours to execute on our own.

A review of this fine work would be incomplete if it glossed over the author's treatment of the Scottish wars which have a ringing relevance for 2014, the year in which Scotland again faces the prospect of becoming sovereign. Famous historical figures like Robert the Bruce, William Wallace and the Englishmen they faced to gain their freedom are given fine, if unspectacular biographies. The passion, and indeed the enlightenment, comes in how these men were affected by the broader, global systems that they gave not even a passing thought.

An excellent micro-history that leaves no doubt of just how perilous our perch is on our little blue dot... (4/5 Stars)

Elephants, their majesty and their power in The Elephant Whisperer

From The Week of March 3, 2014

The world is a playground for humanity. This is the inevitable conclusion drawn by a species that, for thousands of years, has flourished as Earth's apex predator. No other creature can match our intelligence, our self-awareness, our emotional depth. No other species has produced poets and playwrights, gods and scientists. These findings, these thought experiments, distinguish us from the great dumb herd that comprises the world we are free to exploit.

But naturally, this is nonsense, the destructive conclusion of biased thinking. For humans typically only respect as intelligent things they understand. Present to us music and math problems, politics and prose, that we, on some level, comprehend and we are more than willing to acknowledge your personhood, your worthiness. But communicate to us in a language we're not geared to understand -- the skitterings of the monkey, the song of the whale, the bone-deep vibrations of the elephant -- and you are a beast of burden, a thing whose power is to be harnessed and used to our benefit. This inexcusable intellectual arrogance has not only allowed us to ravage our planet, it has permitted us to do it guilt free. The costs are immeasurable, a truth vividly illustrated in Mr. Anthony's touching life story.

Compared to much of the rest of the world, Africa is a wonderland of biodiversity. Swamps and forests, deserts and jungles together contain a breathtaking spectrum of life, from tiny spiders to gigantic elephants, from venomous snakes to harmless dogs, a balance ecosystem in which the ruthless, millennia-long dance of nature and evolution has unfolded. But now, after countless centuries of natural ebb and flow, this treasure trove of life is under threat, not only from encroaching humans but their externalities as well. Urbanization, climate change and trophy hunting have reduced this once vibrant place to a shadow of what it was. Every year, the deserts grow at the expanse of the forests and once populous creatures are hunted for their meat and their horns, as the glories of evolution are reduced to cliched mementos of man's undeserved prowess.

Recently, however, movements have ignited to push back against this butchery of the wild. Conservationists have succeeded in having huge swaths of African territory designated as nature preserves where the ecosystem is allowed to flourish unmolested by all but a handful of poachers who are dealt with violently and mercilessly. Staffed by naturalists whose life's work is the understanding of and treatment of animals, and funded both by governments and tourism, these reserves hold a mirror up to the world, of how it once was and how it will someday never be, the essence of natural, if cruel, harmony.

The story of Lawrence Anthony, the head of the Thula Thula Game Reserve, The Elephant Whisperer is a charming adventure through the life of a world-class conservationist. Organized around Anthony's reception of a herd of elephants abused and hunted by man and the means by which he restores their health and their trust, the work expands to include lush descriptions of the Reserve: its incredible wildlife, its caring staff, its venomous dangers and its thorny politics which are uneasy at the best of times. Throughout, we are afforded glimpses of lives lived with purpose, not to gain advantage, not to hoard wealth, not even to accrue power; simply to hold on to the glories of what came before, beauty we are all-too-eager to bulldoze in favor of another town, another residential complex, another hotel and casino. In this, it is hard not to think of Anthony and those like him as the guardians of nature, as stewards of life the rest of us dismiss as unworthy.

There can be no doubt that Mr. Anthony's charm and passion rides high throughout The Elephant Whisperer, but it is to the credit of Anthony and his biographer that the elephant herd is the work's beating heart. Over and over, the authors demonstrate the grace and intelligence of these majestic creatures who appear as emotionally connected to their allies and their environment as they are willing to fiercely protect it. Described in vivid detail, their five-ton bodies seem as massive as their awareness of the external world is keen, communicating complex notions of friendship and suspicion with devastatingly simple gestures that leave the reader yearning to witness even one of these life-altering moments of cross-species connection. For they leave no doubt that we are not alone on this world we've claimed, that we share it with others who too-often go unheard in the congress of Earth's affairs.

There are flaws here. For a conservationist, Mr. Anthony is a little too fond of recounting his own successes. The Elephant Whisperer's first half is almost entirely about the compassion that Anthony and his friends have for the animals they steward. One cannot help but imagine an alternate text in which the animals feature more prominently than the humans. However, beginning in the work's second half, a series of devastating failures on Anthony's part allows the reader to forge an emotional connection with him and his cause. We are made to understand just how much this means to him and how much of a difference it makes to the creatures in the reserve. This sweeps aside concerns of egotism, leaving in its wake a heart warmed by the world he is fortunate enough to know so well.

A read with the power to re-shape the way one thinks about both Earth and our role in its concrete future... (4/5 Stars)

Corporate greed and a righteous cause in Tom's River

From the Week of February 17th, 2014

Capitalism has built and furnished our world with the stuff of our dreams. In providing a tangible, monetary reward for the risks inherent in the creation of products, it has given us a society in which we travel on airplanes, entertain ourselves with televisions and and accumulate knowledge with networked computers, all of this in the span of little more than 200 years. The innovation it has spurred has literally transformed our planet, making it and the humans who live on it, unrecognizable to the generations who came before.

And yet, for all of capitalism's incalculable benefits, it sometimes extracts a terrible cost. For in incentivizing humans with the promises of wealth, and in valorizing the pursuit of that wealth, it has created conditions in which the societal costs of mass-production are, at best, minimized and, at worst, utterly ignored, its toxic consequences sloughed off for later generations to deal with, a point powerfully made in Dan Fagin's thorough account of one of the United States' most shameful episodes in its corporate history.

Tom's River, New Jersey has been, for much of its 300-year existance, an idyllic town. Nestled on the mid-Atlantic coast, it is part of the famed Jersey Shore, a stretch of American beach front popular amongst vacationers and tourists. In recent decades, its population has grown, elevating property values and turning tidy profits for those who bought when it was still a sleepy community.

However, for 30 years, a toxic secret lay beneath Tom's River's charm and beauty, one that oozed out of the ground and into the public consciousness in the late 1980s when parents and hospital workers began to notice an unusual preponderence of sick children within the town. Investigations of these clustering cancers would eventually lead to the doorstep of Tom's river chemical, a subsidiary of a Swiss dye manufacturer that had, at least since the 1960s, been dumping its carcinogenic waste products into the town's ground and the nearby ocean. This waste eventually seeped into Tom's River's wellwater, likely causing the statistically significant uptick in cancers from the 1970s onward.

An account of the dumping and the long, torturous battle on behalf of the concerned citizens to have tom's River Chemical held to account, Tom's River is a powerful and moving work of non-fiction. Mr. Fagin's history of the idyllic town, and the chemical plant that poisoned it, unfolds like a car crash in slow motion. Its linear narrative ruthlessly explores Tom's River Chemical's greed and negligence, the agonizing grief of the parents who paid the price for its malfeasance, and the many government inquests and scientific investigations that tried to sound out the when, where and why of what it had done. The gestalt is nothing short of a gut-wrenching tale of soulless capitalism butting up hard against the love of parents for their children who play in an increasingly polluted planet.

Peculiarly, Tom's River is made all the more potent for the messy and controversial resolution of its subject. Fearing the years of life-destroying litigation that would almost certainly result from trying to take on Tom's River Chemical in the courts, and lacking any sort of scientifically grounded smoking gun tying the cancer cluster with the chemical dumping, the parents of the affected children negotiated a controversial truce with the company, robbing this multi-decade odyssey of anything like a satisfactory conclusion. And yet, this is precisely why the work is so extraordinary. For it leaves the reader with no doubt that the concerned were forced by circumstances into such a peace. The limitations of science and the perfidy of politicians left them bereft of any muscle to bring to bear against the company , reducing them to two bad options, a foul-tasting peace or a Pyrrhic war in the courts.

This conclusion, however, in no way diminishes the heros who devoted nearly 20 years of their lives to bringing Tom's River Chemical to heel. From the concerned nurses to the EPA officials, from the determined parents to the stoic scientists, Mr. Fagin introduces us to a swath of honest and earnest Americans trying to right a wrong that no one else wanted to acknowledge. In doing so, we come to understand not only the frustration of the unheard but the pain of the healer who can only look on and watch as cancer, in all its varieties, eats away at the innocents in their care. If there's any flaw with the work, it is the absence of interviews from Tom's River Chemical and its Swiss masters who are utterly silent throughout. Whether this is due to bias on the part of the reporter, or heartless lawyering on the part of Novartis, is not at all clear.

Environmentalism, bureaucracy and science all have their moments here, but Tom's River leaves no doubt that, if we are to change our world for the better, it will have to come at the expense of unbridled capitalism. Regulation is a wretched tangle of thorns into which only the foolish wish to plunge, but we must also acknowledge that it is the nature of publicly traded companies to maximize profits at the expense of everyone and everything around them. Their soul drive is to earn. And over two centuries, that drive has given us an amazing world. But the price we pay for that world is too high, for us and for the people who come after us. Incentives must be put in place, penalties so cripplingly severe that they leave no doubt, in any boardroom, that it is more economical to do the right thing than to do the irresponsible thing. To ignore this truth, for reasons of politics or ideology, will devastate our planet which is, after all, the cradle of the generations to come. (4/5 Stars)

An explosive and engaging The Year Without Summer

From The Week of September 2nd, 2013

Civilization is so massive, so ubiquitous, with its cities and monuments, its billions of souls and countless technologies, that it is easy to forget the degree to which its existence is poised on the razor's edge. We, its builders, had to be born on the right planet, orbiting the right star, inhabiting the right region of the galaxy. We had to come along at a time in Earth's evolution in which our natural predators had mostly died out, their remains spending millions of years being converted into fossil fuels for us to exploit. We had to avoid ice ages and killer asteroids, global plagues and seismic catastrophes. In other words, we had to be incredibly lucky. And yet, we do not think of it this way. For us, civilization is a permanent blessing conveyed upon us by the generations who came before us and passed on by us to those who will efollow. This is folly, a truth wonderfully demonstrated by William K. Klingaman's excellent work.

When, on April 10th, 1815, Mount Tambora erupted, sending millions of tons of superheated rock, gas and other debris into the atmosphere, no one could have conceived of the consequences. Even observers of this once-a-millennia explosion assumed it to be little more than guns being fired at distance. And yet, not only would tens of thousands of people parish as a direct result of this colossal eruption, but millions more would be threatened by its long term impact on the climate. For in launching 55-million tons of sulfur-dioxide gas into the stratosphere, the Tambora event supplied the fuel for the creation of sulfuric acid light enough to disperse throughout the atmosphere, helping to reflect sunlight, that would normally make it to the ground, back into space.

This triggered an episode of significant global cooling which, over the coming months, not only robbed the world of a warm summer but lead to the failure of crops and harvests necessary to feed millions of humans in the northern hemisphere. In Quebec, snow would be reported falling as late as June and as early as September, a dire circumstance experienced throughout Europe and North America. In time, conditions normalized and the climate settled back into a more typical disposition, but not before igniting apocalyptic fears and scientific fascination that would drive the former into the arms of faith and the latter out into fields and labs where they could begin to discover just what had happened to the world in that fateful year.

An excellent primer on volcanic eruptions and a disturbing reminder of our incredible dependence on the vicissitudes of the climate, The Year Without Summer is an entertaining and innovative work of popular science. Mr. Klingaman draws upon the surviving letters and works of temporary figures to describe the awful, summerless conditions that lasted, to some degree or another, for three years. But while first-hand observation forms the core of this account, the author has liberally supplemented it with not only scientific explanations of the Tambora eruption but detailed accounts of the other factors, like the solar minimum, that may have exaggerated the impact of the volcanic event.

It is impossible to read this work, however, and not be deeply affected by the tenuousness of our existence. The Tambora eruption lowered global temperatures by no more than two degrees. And yet, this was sufficient to kill off harvests and, thus, send millions of humans scrambling for food. And this in a time in which the human population was a mere fraction of what it is today. If such an incident was to occur now, hundreds of millions might well starve to death. Volcanos and earthquakes, comets and asteroids... These are dangers over which we have absolutely no control. And yet, we live as though we do, not only by reproducing in unsustainable numbers but by choosing to live in the center of most of our world's most dangerous zones. Only the powers of denial can be sufficient to keep us from completely surrendering to the fear of what may well come at any moment.

This is not perfect work. Mr. Klingaman would've done well to discuss in more detail the inner workings of volcanos at the expense of some of the internal lives of early Americans. Moreover, he might've done well to speculate on the impact the weather had on the politics of the period, but these are very minor quibbles in what is otherwise a rewarding and sobering read.

Fascinating work... (4/5 Stars)

The history and science of that most desired part of the female anatomy in Breasts

From The Week of June 3, 2013

As much as we'd like to think that humans are creatures of the mind, empowered by intellect, shaped by morals and fired by curiosity, we are still driven by the base desires for what we can see, touch and taste. We can create the most complex technologies and philosophize at length over the finest points of Aristotelian logic, we can implement free-market economies and devote our days to the beauty of the printed word, and still we are consumed by food and sex, by shelter and family, by kisses and caresses. Perhaps this is well. There is, after all, a great deal of joy and comfort to be found in the treasures of fleshy, epicurean delights. And yet, these same excitations have the power to consume us, to reduce our grand intellects to the pursuit of pleasure at the expense of all else. Of these temptations, few hold the power and the objectification of the female breast, a truth expanded upon in Florence William's eminently engaging exploration.

Throughout recorded history, in carvings and sculptures, in song and story, we have celebrated the breast. It has been a source of nourishment and obsession, of critiques and signalling, of pleasure and frustration. It comes in a dizzying array of forms and sizes, a symbol of sufficient power as to warrant the creation of taboos in its name. But what is the breast made of and why has it become such a potent symbol of womanhood?

From the academic controversies that have swirled around its origins to the medical research that has revealed its vital role in the nourishment of newborns, Ms. Williams attempts to not only answer these questions, but to provide this most fetishized part of the female anatomy with some entertaining context. Beginning with its uniquely omnipresent manifestation in human women and ending with a sobering analysis of the ways in which it acts as a dumping ground for toxic chemicals that have accumulated over the lifetime of its host, she investigates, in Breast, its form and function, its social impact and its medical mysteries, all in an attempt to better understand this object of so much cultural attention.

Alternately humorous and chilling, Breasts is no fluffpiece masquerading as literature. There is no titillation here, nor is there any moral posturing. It is a serious and sincere attempt to determine the value and the purpose of the breast, to record its history, to measure its trends and to predict, in some limited way, its future. Drawing upon dozens of interviews and almost as many personal experiments with diet and environment, Ms. Williams sifts years of data and research into an eminently readable chronicle that leaves the reader as informed about the breast's physiology as he is about its augmentation. To have reduced such a mountain of information into such a digestible and engrossing product is, to say the least, a triumph.

While readers will be no doubt entertained by the vicarious glimpse of the breast-augmentation industry, Breasts is strongest when it stands firmly on scientific ground. Ms. Williams familiarizes us with fat and milk glands, with estrogen and other hormones. But most importantly, she enthusiastically joins with those researchers who have sounded the alarm about the way in which our modern world has disturbingly played with and reprogrammed the female body, tricking it into maturing earlier and earlier. These trends suggest devastating consequences for women in the future, exposing them to a host of savage cancers that have the power to rob them of good health and good fortune. Her call to arms, for increased regulation of these damaging chemicals, is heartfelt and level-headed. There's no wailing here, no rampaging feminism masquerading as popular science. Ms. Williams is calm, clear and thorough in a manner that should inspire plaudits.

Women's health is a fraught field in which to wade, one that contains as many opinions as it does curatives, as many clarion calls as it does conflicts. Breasts won't avoid drawing criticism. But that its purpose is clear, its motives pure and its conclusions eye-opening ought to earn it a place of prominence, even amongst this challenging crowd. (4/5 Stars)

The filth and the power of hydrocarbons explored in Freese's Coal

From The Week of April 8, 2013

Everything runs on energy. From the lightest atom to the heaviest black hole, every organism, every system, cannot exist without some means of excitation, some motive force that allows it to act, that allows it to survive. Without energy, our universe would be a cold, dark, empty space, a lifeless cavern of scattered debris that once was something. And if this truth applies to galaxies, then it certainly applies to human civilizations which are just as voracious, just as greedy, merely on an considerably smaller scale. It follows, then, that few things are as vital to civilization's continuity than energy, the harnessing of which can be complicated both conceptually and morally. This much Barbara Freese captures well in her engaging biography of one of humanity's oldest and most powerful sources of energy.

For centuries now, coal has quite literally lit the world. The condensed remains of organic life millions of years dead and buried, it was once considered nothing more than an ornamentation, indistinguishable from jet by past civilizations that never made insight into coal's enormous potential. For when burned, coal releases its dense storage of hydrocarbons in the form of heat, energy that not only ignited stoves and empowered steamships, but lend its might to the Industrial Revolution. Over the subsequent generations, coal became a ubiquitous, and seemingly endless, source of energy which eventually culminated in a move out of the homes of everyday citizens and into the mighty fire chambers of powerplants which converted this energy into electricity for advancing societies.

Initially, coal was used without compunction by people who saw only its potential, not its price. Gradually, though, with our improving understanding of science and the environment, as our many, historical delusions fell before objective truth, we came to understand that coal was not only limited in supply but terrible in nature. For along with energy, the burning of coal releases immense amounts of CO2, a greenhouse gas that, traditionally, has been kept in careful check by a climate accustomed to balancing Oxygen and CO2 levels across geologic timescales. However, with the wholesale use of the planet's store of coal, that climate check is being threatened with an unmanageable amount of CO2 that might well have the power to forever transform our world.

From its earliest moments on the human stage to its most recent threats to destabilize the climate, Coal is a fascinating chronicle of humanity's relationship with this most advantageous and dangerous resource. Ms. Freese engagingly narrates centuries of human history as it pertains to coal, culminating in a fascinating and sobering description of the powerplants which, today, devour it at a frighteningly unsustainable rate. She highlights how coal once darkened every industrialized sky and hardened every industrialized lung, an inescapable scourge that occupied the thoughts and fears of millions. This sets up a potent punchline, that the centralization of coal burning -- its movement from homes to powerplants -- allowed the people to forget its costs while enjoying its benefits, a Faustian bargain that may well be fatal for our civilization.

Coal is inarguably at its best, however, when detailing the social price of coal's extraction. Ms. Freese devotes entire chapters to the conditions under which coal was literally unearthed by countless miners who risked life and limb to excavate it, not to mention the children who were tasked to keep such mines operational at a time before technology saved us from our lack of conscience. None of the facts presented here are entirely unknown to us, but their presentation wonderfully illustrates just how much of our ethics humans are willing to sacrifice in the name of comfort, convenience and power.

Coal is not without its flaws. Ms. Freese devotes entirely too much time to coal's evolution in the west, in particular, Britain and the united States. Other than an all-too-brief chapter on the Chinese relationship with coal, her account makes it seem as though only these two nations have had any influence on coal, its excavation and its use. This seems awfully narrow for a tome that purports to contain the human history of coal. What's more, the geological roots of coal, while explained, are skimmed over, especially relative to the environmentalism which, while welcomed and well-argued, is less interesting than evolution and hydrocarbons.

Notwithstanding these drawbacks, Coal is a brief and edifying look at a material absolutely essential to the production of electricity that our civilization uses in such abundance. In this, Ms. Freese's work succeeds on its merits. Engaging if somewhat limited... (3/5 Stars)

America's Founding Fathers and the land they loved in Wulf's Founding Gardeners

From The Week of February 11, 2013
All nations are shaped by the thoughts, dreams and ambitions of their founders. For the generations that follow these men exult them, elevating their beliefs and their deeds until they are legend, a reality which ensures that their fundamental ideals are perpetuated down through time, even unto the present day. Naturally, as decades become centuries, there are more and more disagreements over what these founders intended, as cultural dislocation causes the meaning of their words to be dissipated by the winds of time, but we still try to live up to the standard they set which makes of them creatures of endless fascination. What was their vision? And how would their views have changed in the face of a rapidly evolving world? Short of availing ourselves of a time machine, we will never know, but we can sift among their letters and their musings for clues, something Ms. Wulf does here with mixed success.

The Founding Fathers of the United States of America are giants of history. The power and the resonance of their names exceeds virtually every one of their contemporaries, even those most royal. And yet, thanks to the success of their glorious experiment, Jefferson and Adams, Madison and Hamilton, Washington and Franklin, commoners all, are the names celebrated in books and memorialized by monuments, their actions having helped to usher in an entirely new world free of the decrepitude of authoritarianism in all its forms.

But who were these men? And what influenced them while they were shaping their legendary ideas? Summoning their journals and their proclamations, interpreting their symbols and their analogies, Founding Gardeners argues that the Founding Fathers filtered their experiences through the lens of environmentalism, a naturalistic approach to the world that began at home and extended out to the rest of the world. From the plantations they so assiduously cultivated to the farmers they hailed as heroes, they celebrated ones connection to the earth, describing it as the most profound and moral partnership man could forge. When all else is uncertain and troublesome, when temptation lurks behind every corner, working the soil will never steer a good man wrong.

Though too narrow in scope and too deprived of analysis, Founding Gardeners is a fascinating read. Ms. Wulf draws upon the copious correspondence of America's legends to establish both their connection to the land that gave them a second life, free of the aristocratic strictures of the old world, and to describe the ways in which these men manifested from this connection a code of conduct, for themselves and the world, that they considered upstanding. In this, Ms. Wulf is most thorough, excavating declarations and obsessions about the earth that seem downright radical by today's standards. Were one to present these quotes, stripped of attribution, and ask the public to guess who spoke them, surely their most common answer would be treehuggers and Gaia-worshippers, minds without any grasp of the complexities of the modern world which brings us to the book's central problem.

It is difficult to imagine how the views of these founders are relevant to our era. Ms. Wulf claims to have written the book after journeys across America's landscapes inspired her to investigate what the Founders thought of the land to which they'd devoted themselves. But it is nearly impossible to read her work here and not imagine that she sought to demonstrate the degree to which modern society has deeply drifted from the ideals the Founders had for the country they birthed. This is a point worth making; for if we're to celebrate these men for their vision and their views, then we have to take in their environmentalism as well. And yet, Ms. Wulf at no point acknowledges the extent to which the intervening centuries have transformed the world. In the time of the Founders, America claimed a population of ten million. Today, that number is 315 million, nearly a 32-fold increase that does not even come close to representing the manifest change that industrialism and technology has wrought upon a crowded planet. This needs to be said. We cannot go back to what we were. Nor should we wish to. That world is as unchanging as it is rife with illness.

There's much here to admire. Ms. Wulf has perhaps overemphasized the role the land played in the lives of these men, but in highlighting it she has humanized them in ways both fascinating and endearing. But if Founding Gardeners wished to be more than a piece of nostalgia, it needed to confront the question of how the thoughts and dreams of the Founders could operate in our world, not theirs. (3/5 Stars)

The Story Of Earth by Robert Hazen

From The Week of October 30, 2012 How does life begin? We live on a world teeming with plants and trees, insects and eagles, microbes and whales, a world on which life has coalesced in the depths of the oceans and on the peaks of our mountains. It is so prolific, so constant, that it has made it impossible to imagine its empty opposite, a barren rock, home to nothing more than ice and stone. But how did all of this begin? And what are the necessary conditions to ignite the wonder that lives beyond our doors? As much as it pains the mind to conceive of something blooming from nothing, Mr. Hazen challenges us to do precisely this in his epic examination of the origin of planet Earth.

Birthed during the violent tumult produced by the solar system's formation some 4.5 billion years ago, Earth is something of a miracle. For not only is it currently the only world in the known universe to support life, it survived comets, asteroids and even planetary collisions to become so much more than an icy rock. Certainly, its fortunate position in the so-called Goldylocks Zone, that advantageous band of cosmic real estate far enough from a star not to be fried and close enough not to be frozen, helped its cause, but this is far from the only necessary virtue for life's evolution. There must also be tides to stir the oceans, planetary rotation to evenly bake the surface in sunlight, a molten core to spur volcanic activity, and mechanisms for capturing and releasing carbon dioxide and oxygen in a beneficial, self-sustaining cycle. And even these are but a few components to providing life a warm and comfortable cradle.

However, the factor we consider least is the most important to Mr. Hazen, time, time for acids to learn how to become bacteria, for bacteria to learn how to be multicellular, for multicellular organisms to spread out and diversify, and for that life to populate the oceans and finally the land with the varieties of the ecosystem we see today. Time... For the planet to evolve, for our star to strengthen, for our moon to grow more distant, for our species to build upon millions of years of fortunate mistakes. Through rocks and mathematical modeling, from the mirrors on the moon to the fossilbeds in our seas, Mr. Hazen examines the fullness of that time, charting life's growth through Earth's successive eras, most of which would have been hostile to human existence. For even if we managed to survive the poisonous atmosphere, we would have surely been trampled by creatures out of our nightmares, manifestations that are now nothing more than ghosts trapped in ancient bones. These are the many faces of our Earth, an Earth that isn't really ours after all.

Though at times soupy with statistics, The Story of Earth is, in the main, a delightful journey through Earth's largely unrecognizable past. Drawing upon a career spent studying Earth's many and varied rocks, Mr. Hazen, a researcher at Carnagy-Mellon University, highlights the major eras in Earth's development, challenging our minds to imagine the strange and deadly faces that Earth has worn in eons past. For while we naturally think of Earth as a possession one, an ancient creature claimed by propagation and technology, it has existed infinitely longer and in infinitely harsher environs than we ever will. Mr. Hazen drives this home in a human-ego-deflating demonstration of research and discovery, mathematical modeling and reasonable imagination that, while occasionally numbing, is never thoughtless.

While we seem no closer to an answer on precisely how life, like the universe, kindled into being, Mr. Hazen infects his work here with a delightful sense of childlike awe and excitement that one imagines he has never lost. The thirst for discovery combined with the thrill of understanding provides the work a heartening momentum. Science and imagination mix together here into a well-spiced stew that is worthy of being sampled and appreciated. (4/5 Stars)

The Last Lost World by Lydia & Stephen Pyne

From The Week of October 22, 2012 As much as the occasional upheavals in our lives may suggest otherwise, most of our days are lived in a stable,predictable environment. Variables like the weather do their best to roil this consistent brew, but these represent only a handful of chaotic forces agitating within an assembly of normality. Everything from the composition of the atmosphere we breathe to the menagerie of the organisms we come across are indistinguishable from conditions 50 years ago, 500 years ago, perhaps even 5,000 years ago. What we know of the world has been the world since humans discovered agriculture ten millennia ago. But has the Earth forever been this way? In the thousands of millennia prior to the rise of humanity, was the planet then as we think of it now? And if not,just how different was it from what we know so well? Ms. Pyne and Mr. Pyne attempt to explain this muddled text.

Beginning more than two million years ago, the Pleistocene is the most recent of Earth's periodic ice ages, each of which have profoundly transformed the planet's climate and the creatures that live within it. While Warm temperatures accelerate the propagation of most species, cold temperatures, especially temperatures which leave large chunks of the planet covered in ice, are deadly to them, making food far too scarce for most species to survive. This affect is particularly hard on larger species which, in dying off, open the door to smaller mammals who are free to flourish in this, at least for them, new and less dangerous environment. Though humans have adapted remarkably well to these new conditions, they are not alone. Animals from bears to elephants have weathered these same interglacial storms, putting their paws, hooves and muzzles into the ring to be the new apex predators. However, unfortunately for them, tooth and claw, feather and fir have lost out to the hairless ape who has used his mind to conquer and control all that lays before him.

Of course, looking back millions of years to divine the truths of the planet's past is not easy. It relies largely on the finding and the proper studying of fossils which can tell us much about not only the kinds of creatures that once walked the Earth but the climate they walked in and the enemies they fought in order to survive. The Last Lost World takes the reader on a journey through some of these fossils and the caves that have sheltered them for millennia. Through this process, interesting facts about the Pleistocene and our role within it are revealed and carefully examined, inspected for bias and finally judged based on their validity in hopes of making clearer our lamentably opaque picture of Earth's many and varied pasts.

Though their intentions are good and their studiousness admirable, The Last Lost World is in every way a pedantic nightmare. Ms. Pyne and Mr. Pyne might well be excellent academics and admirable analysts of fossil records, but they have assembled a disastrous study of the Pleistocene that concerns itself infinitely more with the study of the era rather than the era itself. Yes, some species, like the cave bear, are touched on. And certainly, they pause in their navel-gazing long enough to elaborate on the missing links in humanity's evolutionary chain. But these are merely rest stops on a journey into self-flagellation. For our authors here are consumed by the human biases inherent in defining the Pleistocene and in how these biases reflect more broadly on humanity itself, topics which, I'm sure, hold academic interest for some, but surely not for the layity.

The Last Lost World casts wretchedly little light upon the mysteries and the accepted truths of Earth's ice ages, their characteristics, their durations, even their mechanics. There is certainly room enough here for a discussion of scientific methodologies, especially in the age of climate deniers. Good science is thoroughly tested science. But instead of being treated to a wise and warning-filled coda, the reader is bombarded with a rambling dissertation on the nature of scientific classification, the ruminations on which are torturously extended out into a discussion about human nature that only an academic could love. I left the work knowing very little about the actual Pleistocene which was ostensibly the subject of this ponderous work.

Profoundly flawed. Wikipedia was far more informative. (1/5 Stars)

The Quiet World by Douglas Brinkley

From The Week of August 20, 2012
To what extent should we value nature? It is as glorious as it is fearsome, as beautiful as it is merciless, an unimaginably ancient system that has nurtured countless varieties of organisms through the eternal cycle of life. For this, as well as being the cradle of humanity, it should be respected and cherished, an ecosystem that is beyond our right to control. And yet, is it not, in some sense, a means to our end? Humanity is, as far as we know, the only intelligent species of any consequence to have evolved on Earth. For the sake of our future potential, for the limitless ways in which a hyper-technological humanity could ignite life on thousands of dead worlds as it spreads across the stars, is it not acceptable that Earth's biosphere be sacrificed to achieve that end?

It is not ours to sacrifice, or it is the means to our end. Millions of species depend upon it to survive, or none matter as much as we do. It seems, at times, an eternal debate, a clash of irreconcilable ideologies that will forever prevent a healthy consensus from coalescing around this most critical issue. But while the debate is perpetuated, Mr. Brinkley asks us to consider the wilderness we'd so willfully tame before taking to it the axe of civilization.

When, in 1867, Alaska was sold to the United States by an imperial Russia made poor by the Crimean War, it was thought, by Americans, to be a boondoggle. Coined as Seward's Folly, Alaska was dismissed as a worthless tundra, an unimaginably cold stretch of sub-Arctic land farm ore suited to wolves and bears than man. All this would change in the closing decades of the 19th century when the Klondike goldrush transformed the image of Alaska from a worthless, wintery stone into a glittering gem in the American crown, a forest of fortune where any man could pluck a lifetime of wealth from branches sagging under the weight of abundant fruit. These initial strikes only fuelled speculation in Alaska which would eventually yield up rich deposits of oil, minerals and timber, plentiful resources that, if cultivated, could bloat the coffers of American corporations for decades to come.

But to a group of adventurers and hunters, explorers and jurists, to cultivate Alaska would be to destroy it. It would mean carving highways through its forests, shafting mines into its soil, blowing the tops off its mountains and felling its trees. It would mean forcing the species that called Alaska home to make yet another retreat before the constant encroachment of a civilization that had already thoroughly thoughtlessly despoiled lands to the south. Determined to prevent the speculators and the capitalists from taking away what they considered to be North America's last wildlife refuge, this movement of disparate souls banded together to drive legislation through the American congress that would forever preserve a huge swath of Alaska from the cruelties of cultivation. For fifty years, they scratched and clawed, fighting interests both special and selfish to keep pure the magnificent and quiet world they called home. For some places are simply too grand and too beautiful to be torn apart by industry. And so, when, in 1959, President Eisenhower signed their victory into law, they rejoiced. For humanity would have to find its resources somewhere else, leaving pure this last, great wilderness.

Though hobbled by a narrowness of focus, the Quiet World is, nonetheless, a thorough and engrossing document of a generational effort to create the Alaskan wildlife Reserve. Penned by a first-rate historian whose chronicle of Hurricane Katrina sits in the first rank of disaster stories, it devotes its full attention to the men and women without whom Alaska's wilderness would have surely been allowed to succumb to speculators. Colorful enviornmentalists from John Muir to Mardy Murie, from Charles Sheldon to William O Douglas, feature prominently, their lives and their deeds venerated by an author who cannot hide his deep admiration for their accomplishments which were as improbable as they were immense. And yet, they are, to a crusader, overshadowed by the looming figure of Theodor Roosevelt, that most rugged of individualists whose conservationist speeches and letters are celebrated here with reverence and relish.

But though Mr. Brinkley does a wonderful job capturing the rugged individuals who spearheaded the effort to preserve this rare and immense wilderness, his account fails to do justice to the Alaska that must surely have inspired this project. Though there are some passages that convey general impressions of trees and flowers, mountains and wolves, they are exceedingly rare, scattered glimpses that fail to coalesce into a memorable impression of what must be an extraordinarily beautiful land. Ironically, the author has chosen to relate the history of the lifting up of nature out of the grasping hands of humanity through the eyes of humans. Yes, these are humans who helped save this wilderness from being sullied, but the why of it will necessarily escape us until we are better informed on the nature and the variety of the land in question.

Mr. Brinkley has committed his delightfully ordered mind and his eminently skilled pen to the telling of a necessary tale. In doing so, he has unearthed any number of courageous people who would have otherwise been remembered by only an environmentally conscious few. In this, he has done a worthy service. But in failing to leave the reader with a stronger impression of the Alaska that has captivated these crusaders, he falls short of his lofty best. Fascinating but flawed work... (3/5 Stars)

Gardens Of The Sun by Paul McAuley

From The Week of August 13, 2012

Tyranny has always been a powerful and destructive force. For it gives over to the one the authority and the freedom of the many, an authority which can then be used as a powerbase from which the tyrant can impose his ideas, his values and his will upon the world. But until recently, tyranny has been hobbled by certain limitations, chiefly, the tyrant's inability to directly command those who are not within his immediate vicinity. After all, a tyrant's will is considerably less fearsome when it is conveyed by letter, or by messenger, and not in person where the receiver can be influenced by all the trappings of the tyrant's station.

With the dawn of the technological age, however, the rules of the game have changed. With instantaneous communication across the length and breadth of the world, tyrants can impose their wills like never before. They can augment their powerbases with technologies that manipulate media, suppress dissent and annihilate resistance. And if such is possible today, what will be possible tomorrow? What will be possible in a century? Can democracy survive such powerful tools falling into the hands of tyrants? Mr. McAuley speculates in a novel that brings to a close the saga begun in The Quiet War.

It is the 23rd century and humanity has reached the stars. Fuelled by enormous leaps in genetic engineering, which have made possible the growing of crops in non-traditional environments, planets and moons from Mars to Saturn, Io to Titan, have been colonized by explorers and adventurers, philosophers and fortune-seekers, all of whom have fled Earth's political corruption and environmental decay. The Outers, as they come to be called, found their communities on utopian ideals of democracy and free will which help to harness the powers of experimentation and creativity which allow them to make huge, technological strides. They consider themselves the future of humanity, a species capable of adapting to any environment, of taking on any guise, of embarking on any adventure.

On Earth, meanwhile, the necessities of repairing a broken climate have nudged Earth-bound humans in an entirely more authoritarian direction. A toxic combination of radical greens, opposed to any form of genetic engineering, and hardline militarists, intent upon holding the reins of power, have abolished all forms of democracy and due process, replacing them with various strains of fascism that range from simple dictatorships to political clans. And so, while the people scrub and scrape at the torn, gray earth, trying to inject life into the corrupted soil, the powerful descend deeper and deeper into intolerance. Finding that they can no longer abide the democratic threat of the Outers, they move against them with nukes and warships, trying to impose upon them the fascism and slavery in such vogue on Earth.

But though the Outers are vanishingly few compared to the billions on Earth, and though they have been decisively defeated in the opening salvos of the Quiet War, they possess what the Earth powers do not, freedom, freedom to change, freedom to adapt, freedom to think beyond the narrow confines of their world. Their weapons are their ideas, viruses that, once they take hold, are almost impossible to uproot. But can these weapons work fast enough? Can they bear fruit before the last of the Outers are wiped out? Only time will tell.

Though at times troubled by aimlessness, Gardens of The Sun nonetheless builds on the creative successes of the work that gave it form. Where The Quiet War preoccupied itself with familiarizing the reader with the various influential factions in the author's fascist future, Gardens of The Sun is much more of a rumination on rebellion and the pros and cons of various forms of government. Here, the environmental alarmism of the first novel gives way to a re-imagination of a kind of American Revolution 23rd-century style, with a band of overmatched freedom fighters trying to live beyond the clutches of a corrupt and cruel aristocracy. All the characters from The Quiet War reappear, though, it's by no means essential to have read that novel. For, here, time moves much more swiftly, covering decades where the prior work managed only months.

For as much as Gardens of The Sun brings this duology to a satisfying conclusion, it is equally clear that Mr. McAuley was, in large part, at a loss as to how to reach the ending he envisioned. Substantial swaths of the work read like summaries of events that either needed to be covered in far more depth or ignored altogether. For the middle road the author has chosen causes the work to read like a book review more than a work of literature. Moreover, in as much as the novel's conclusion is pleasing, it is one of the least earned endings to a successful series I've ever encountered. After spending hundreds of pages building up to the series' political climax, events proceed without hardly any agency being exercised by any of the author's characters. They are, like the readers, left to look on while the world radically changes around them. Perhaps Mr. McAuley was endeavoring to make a point about the nature of change, that it takes whatever form it desires, ignoring the wishes of its prime movers, but it seems far more likely that he did not know how to bring about his denouement.

For all of the work's flaws, let there be no doubt that Mr. McAuley possesses a formidable intellect and a passion for biology. Any science junkie will be well-entertained by this duology while most political animals will find, here, much to maintain their interest. But these talents cannot, here, make up for the deep-seated flaws in plot that prevent the work from reaching anything like its full potential. Solid but disappointing... (2/5 Stars)

Dark Green Religion by Bron Taylor

From The Week of July 30, 2012
Though the evidence is not yet conclusive, it seems very likely that, for as long as humans have had verbal communication, they have also had religion. For dig site after dig site, museum after museum, ancient codex after ancient codex, we witness our ancestors praying, begging, beseeching and cajoling gods from the sky to the hearth to alter the course of events. This is strongly suggestive of a nearly universal desire for some sort of metaphysical force to be out there, shepherding our destinies while harboring the wisdom of eternity. But what is religion? Is it, as the dictionaries claim, obeisance to a divine around which a coherent doctrine springs up, or is it nothing more than the need to trust in something bigger than ourselves, something that, on some level, understands and sympathizes with us? To some, this may seem like semantics, but not to Mr. Taylor who has penned a work on a new kind of faith that's as fascinating as it is problematic.

From the trees that give us wood to the fields that give us grain, Humans have always relied upon the fruits of the land to survive and flourish, but it wasn't until the advent of the agricultural and industrial revolutions that we transitioned from being Earth's children to being Earth's exploiters. With the harnessing of electricity and the drilling for oil, the logging for wood and the quarrying for stone, we left behind our fellow species as benefactors of our planet's largess and became creatures ravenous for more fuel, more materials, more stuff by which to effect our collective destiny. Understandably, this harvesting has had enormous consequences for the world we've cultivated, acidifying its oceans, desertifying its grasslands, carbonizing its atmosphere and toxifying its riverways. Moreover, it has thrust further and further into the shrinking wilderness the other species which once roamed free, causing the extinction of some and the endangerment of many.

In response to these consequential changes, a movement has arisen to alert humanity about the depth of these alterations. Stirring in the 19th century but truly taking flight in the 20th, it argues that the planet has been devastatingly degraded by the thoughtless practices of the human multitudes who have been born and sheltered by it, that these degradations are in all likelihood permanent, and that they have not only jeopardized the future of humanity but the future of her world as well. This green movement contends that there must e a universal adjustment in our attitudes, not only with regard to Earth but in regard to our own culture which promotes a kind of disposability of things, of objects, of inventions, which, in the manufacturing and in the throwing away, harm the planet. This movement lacks a traditional godhead around which to coalesce, but in place of the divine it has substituted Mother Nature, engendering her with the same kind of consciousness and purposeful drive that traditional theists grant their creators. Consequently, this strand of environmentalism is not so much a movement but a faith, a green faith, for the 21st century.

Though at times suffering the dryness characteristic of academic work, Dark Green Revolution is, nonetheless, an edifying journey through a growing subculture. Mr. Taylor makes a valiant attempt to categorize the various branches of green religion by primarily measuring the degree to which they believe in Gaia. But more potent than his attempts to organize the various forms of belief are his explorations of the numerous groups that practice such green faith. He identifies their high priests and their shibboleths, their desires and their non-negotiables. And in doing so, he makes a compelling case that, yes, that this form of organized environmentalism is, in fact, some kind of faith. All this without committing his own views to paper...

For all the fascinating and courageous people we encounter here, for all of the history covered and the failures chronicled, Dark Green Religion is problematic. Let us suppose that organized environmentalism possesses some trappings of religion. Do we not completely dilute the term's power by including it? It may provoke passion amongst its adherents, it may even claim to have some sort of force in whose name followers are animated, but filing it under the same definition as the Abrahamic religions seems highly dubious. After all, if we only define religion as having high priests, followers and some sort of organizing principle, we'd have to also include under this banner purposes as ubiquitous and unreligious as DIY, as organized labor, as bird-watching. For they too have their elders, their advocates and their codes, but no one would describe them as religions.

We're forced, then, into a philosophical discussion of terms that distracts from Mr. Taylor's strength here, his investigation of a minority that is both exceedingly colorful and increasingly powerful. Here, he does himself and his subjects justice by leaving his readers deeply informed on the underlying drivers and beliefs that empower those who follow the green faith. However, the obsession with terminology does blunt the degree to which the virtues here can be enjoyed.

Compelling work... (3/5 Stars)

Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi

From The Week of June 25, 2012

Despite all the truths, about our world and our place in it, that science and self-discovery have helped us to acquire, most of us still reject the essential randomness of organic life. As beings of reason and intelligence, of ambition and progress, we hunger to believe in an order greater than ourselves, a grand design that can superimpose meaning upon all our actions. After all, such belief would explain so much of what's both unfair and unknown about life. It illustrates why some are born into miserable circumstances -- these are spiritual tests of ones faith in the divine -- and it assigns an incentive to goodness -- for surely the reward of a painless peace in the afterlife will entice us into conduct more noble than our natures.

But if we are honest with ourselves, we know the truth, that life is fundamentally chaotic, that the circumstances of our birth are uncontrollable, and that the lives we wind up living are, if not predetermined, slotted into tracks that our backgrounds will not allow us to escape. This is a cruel and unsentimental worldview, hence its unpopularity, but this is what lives beyond our doors. And it is a truth Mr. Bacigalupi exemplifies in his near-future novel.

The apex of human civilization has come and gone, its jetplanes and its spaceships, its nuclear weapons and its supercomputers sucked into the depths of ever-rising oceans and consigned to the memories of the very old or the very learned. The glories of the Accelerated Age have been replaced by the ultra-utilitarian reality of the present, life on a hot, humid, environmentally unstable planet where human innovation has given way to the practicalities of economic and spiritual survival. Everything new is recycled from the old, the bones of drowned cities and beached oiltankers stripped for metal and spare parts, wires and electronics. This detritus of the old times are scavenged and sold at criminally low costs to mammoth multinationals, corporations whose boardroom battles are so far removed from life on the beaches that they might as well be taking place on another world.

In this world of humid decay, Nailer, a diminutive but wiry teenager, fights to hold on against the rising tide. Part of a light crew that strips copper out of oiltankers, he contends with both an abusive father and his own growing size to keep his job and his meager profits. For to lose either in this cutthroat world means certain death. And so, when, after a category six storm, known as a citykiller, hurls an unimaginable fortune, in the form of a fully tricked-out clipper ship, onto his little stretch of beach, he can be forgiven for exulting. His lucky strike has finally landed in the form of salvage that will net him a ticket out of this life. There's just one problem. The owner of the broken clipper, dripping with gold and silver, isn't dead. Moreover, she's wanted by powerful corporates willing to kill to get her back, proving to Nailer, once and for all, that life is neither fair or simple.

Underpinned by a potent blend of philosophy and economics, Ship Breaker harnesses the best aspects of imaginative science fiction to weave a memorable, dystopic tale about life, its pains and its pleasures. Mr. Bacigalupi, who dazzled with the atmospheric The Windup Girl, is equally effective here at envisioning a future tortured by a tragically decaying environment and unimaginable economic inequality, both of which conspire to consign all but the upperclasses to lives of hardship and toil. The social stresses that always existed beneath the surface of life in the United States have finally busted into the open, tearing rungs out of the social ladder, leaving behind cavernous gulfs that no one from the dregs can forge. The resulting despair leads to widespread criminality and lawlessness that the government is incapable of combating.

And yet, despite this grim background, Ship Breaker is not a bitter novel. Energized by the youthful vitality of its protagonist, it is buoyed by a kind of adolescent optimism. For as much as life is difficult, it takes a very great deal to separate the young from their hope. The flame can be made to flicker under a deluge of injustice and ruthlessness, but it will not out, not before the cynicism of middle age has set in. Nailer, consequently, elevates the novel on the ropey muscles of his scarred shoulders, his goodness and his enthusiasm the vehicle through which readers can judge the selfishness of all those he encounters.

But for a troublesome third act in which the author clumsily wastes 50 pages in an unnecessary effort to justify the denouement, this is lovely and thoughtful work that will be welcomed by those open to reading about an increasingly probable future. (3/5 Stars)

Private Empire by Steve Coll

From The Week of May 14, 2012

For two centuries, the western world has been dominated by the nation state, a concept which unites, under the banner of lawful, representative government, all of a country's peoples and faiths, traditions and institutions. While the nation state is prone to fostering dangerous skeins of nationalism in those it harbors, this downside is more than compensated by the extent to which it gathers up the disparate and forges of their factiousness a common cultural identity that is moored by the rule of law and equality for all.

Recently, however, the nation state has come under increasing strain. For the British Empire showed us all the power of the economy, that everpresent engine of innovation that advances our world while keeping our people employed. As the nations of the world have progressively given themselves over to this pursuit of profit, the companies nourished by this capitalist climate, have grown more powerful. Many have even shaken off their nationalist chains to become global entities which answer to no government and heed but one god; money. For good or ill, they are here to stay, bound to only grow in power in the years ahead. Exxonmobil is foremost among these international entities and this is Mr. Coll's vivid history of its life.

One of the many offspring of the 1911 dismantling of Standard Oil, Exxon has honored its Rockefellerian roots by becoming one of the 21st century's most profitable corporations. Infused by a potent strain of American Protestantism, it has deployed a mixture of ruthlessness and prudence to navigate some impossibly bleak nights on the way to prominence. The worst and most scarring of these calamities came in 1989 with the disastrous sinking of the Exxon Valdez. No matter how grim the circumstance, however, Exxon has endured, learning from its mistakes and writing its subsequent reforms into its very DNA in hopes of ensuring that, come the dawn, it will sail into clear skies and profitable seas. In light of the fact that Exxon's annual profits often exceed the GDP of entire countries, its capacity to find daylight cannot be questioned.

But just how has Exxon been so successful? Mr. Coll, an award-winning journalist, dives into the company's corporate culture, surfacing with a treasure trove of clues that lead back to the fateful 1989 spill which was nearly the company's ruin. In the disaster's aftermath, Exxon was a discredited institution, a humbled giant whose employees were the butt of late-night jokes and whose practices were the target of environmentalist scorn. In the years since, Exxon has been one of the world's most profitable companies with a sterling safety record, a propensity for avoiding some of the world's worst conflict zones, and record profits which gave it more than enough leverage to purchase Mobil, a sibling from the Standard Oil days. This turnaround, argues Mr. Coll, stems from the powerful leadership of Lee Raymond, a career Exxon man who rose to helm the company through the Spill's aftermath and the years that followed. A scientist by training, Raymond transformed Exxon's practices by ruthlessly demanding the absolute best from his employees, standards which culled the weak and the non-compliant from the Exxon herd, leaving behind loyal troops willing to follow in the wake of Raymond's abrasive but competent leadership.

Private Empire is first-rate journalism. Mr. Coll's clear, linear reconstruction of Exxon's history, its sins and its lessons, is as digestible as it is compelling. From the White-House politics to Exxonmobil's corporate culture, from insurgencies in Indonesia to dictatorships in western Africa, he walks us through the politics, the science and the realities of the world's biggest oil giant and the conflict-riddled regions in which it operates and competes. What emerges is a captivating portrait of a hyper-efficient company governed by an ethos that insists upon both excellence and conformity to the exclusion of all else. Nothing must interfere with its core principles, for which it is proud, or its core business, for which it is willing to stop at nothing to protect.

Private Empire is a vivid history of a fearsome multinational corporation, an entity so vast and so profitable that it cannot be shackled by government. For our world runs on oil. It provides the power that fuels our cars and the trucks that carry our goods, our food, our capacity to live as we do. Worse yet, oil is a necessity that, absent any breakthroughs in alternative energy sources, will only continue to grow in importance in the decades to come which, in turn, will only make companies like Exxonmobil all the more potent. How long before, in the face of attempts at government regulation, companies like Exxonmobil simply deny the right of government to interfere with them and declare themselves sovereign? How long until the nation state is replaced by the corporate state? It is both a chilling and a fascinating prospect which this captivating work makes seem imminent.

An outstanding read with any number of jaw-dropping moments... One of the best reads this year. (5/5 Stars)

Elixir by Brian Fagan

From The Week of April 09, 2012

Why do we treasure that which is rare and take for granted that which is plentiful? Humans are creatures blessed with sufficient powers of reasoning to comprehend that, so long as a resource is finite, its value should be determined by its utility, not its scarcity. A limited supply is just that, a limited supply. If millions of years are required to make more of what we use, then we best not spend all that we have unless we wish to go without. This is fairly simple logic, and yet we continue to save our fondest regard for that which is rarest and squander that which is not, obsessed by the notion of possessing the last sliver of the available pie while paying no mind to the unavoidable truth that, in some way, we require all of Earth's finite resources to sustain ourselves. This is Mr. Fagan's eminently sensible argument in this, his sweeping study of the history of water.

For billions of years, it has flowed across the surface of our world, chasing gravity while participating in an environmental cycle essential for our existence. It has carved out rivers and streams, created spectacular lakes and valleys. It has born on its breast the building blocks of life, implanting them on distant shores. It has made possible all that we hold dear. It is water. And, today, it is everywhere, so ubiquitous that most of us in the developed world give not a moment's thought to wasting it. However, it was not always thus.

Before the advent of modern technology, before public works projects built dams and tapped underground reservoirs, our ancestors, from Africa to Mesopotamia, from China to Mexico, depended upon the weather to grant them water for their survival. This precious resource was so scarce at times that temples were erected to gods who might have some sway over temperamental climates that brought droughts as often as deluges. Water was considered sacred, a worthy commodity for the swearing of oaths.

But then man discovered agriculture. He learned how to find water and spread it across his fields to grow yet more food, allowing the population to expand, allowing for the advancement of science, allowing for the discovery of yet more ways of cultivating the land and harnessing the watery discharge of glaciers and lakes, springs and aquifers. With these advancements came yet more people, with more ideas, moments of insight that would ignite civilization. Water taps replaced the fallen temples and yet another resource became a means to our end.

From the utility of Mesopotamian wadis to the grandeur of Roman aqueducts, from religion to imperialism, Elixir is a history of water and its cultivation. Mr. Fagan reaches back into the dark depths of our history in order to describe the dozens of ingenious methods our ancestors used to capture and store this most vital of life's lubricants. In doing so, he pulls back the curtain on a dozen dead civilizations, restoring them temporarily to life, commemorating them for their ingenuity. Each effort, each invention, becomes a brick in the wall of progress that culminates in a modern day world that, thanks to the pleasures of excess, has forgotten the preservational lessons of earlier eras, squandering that which we cannot make again.

In this, Mr. Fagan's history becomes a rather pointed critique of the cavalier attitude we have adopted towards water, a resource vanishing at increasingly rapid rates thanks to the explosive expansion of the human population. What will we do when the very stuff of life, becomes too scarce to be handed round? Will thirsty societies simply close up shop and quietly go into the night without so much as a whimper? Or will they fight for their survival, deploying all the destructive tools necessary to secure their continued existences? In light of our warlike history, the latter is all but a certainty. What sort of world, what manner of civilization, will be left behind by the water wars of the near future?

This is a most thorough history of a most underappreciated resource. Diamonds and gold will not sustain us. They cannot quench our thirst or water our crops. Life is filled with baubles, trinkets, in which we invest so much pride. All this while the water that sustained us is used to carry away our waste. Elixir is as revelatory as it is complete, as enlightening as it is frightening. Ours is an uncertain future. (4/5 Stars)

Mindstar Rising: Greg Mandel 01 by Peter F. Hamilton

From The Week of January 30, 2012

The human being is a fascinating animal. He is capable of great goodness, acts of charity, selflessness and kindness that have the power to inspire a transformation of our world. But he is also capable of great ugliness, dark deeds driven by avarice and self-interest that have the power to infect and corrupt those he influences. How do we choose our paths? What factors, biological, environmental, circumstantial, shape that choice? And having once made it, can we go back and choose again? These are all questions that have been debated many times, in literature and in the culture, but they are questions no less potent for being so frequently posed. They underpin this gripping piece of cyberpunk from Mr. Hamilton, elevating it well above the fray.

In a near-future England devastated by climate change and political and economic upheaval, life is as tempestuous as it is treacherous. After ten years of communist rule, in which the country's infrastructure was allowed to decay, the Peoples Socialist Party (PSP) have been violently overthrown, their leader, along with much of Parliament, immolated by a powerful, non-nuclear bomb that could have only come from a handful of the world's richest nations. The conservatives, having been restored to power, try to implement economic reforms to get the country back on its feet, but ten years is an eternity in the arena of competitive advantage and England is sure to lag behind the rest of the advanced world for some time to come.

Enter Event Horizon, England's last, great corporate hope. Helmed by Philip Evans, an eccentric but brilliant billionaire, the British company, one of the world's foremost manufacturers of bleeding-edge technology, moved its operations into international waters to avoid the punitive collectivism of the PSP. Now that communism has left the isles, Event Horizon has welcomed itself back into the fold and is doing all it can to be the Atlas upon whom the British economy rests. And so, when its operations are sabotaged and its founders targeted for assassination by powerful but unknown interests, everything is at stake. For if Event Horizon falls, England may well fall with her.

A freak and a murderer, Greg Mandel is the result of a military experiment gone sideways. Attempts to breed a better soldier have left Mandel with hyperactive empathy, an ability which allows him to sense nearby minds and delve into them to sift truths from lies. Since his military days ended in a disastrous expedition in Turkey, he's been hiring out his gun to those who'll pay, keeping his head down and his conscience dormant while the world around him accretes towards oblivion. This chain of nihilistic jobs is broken, however, when Event Horizon comes calling. It's the job of a lifetime, a job so lucrative Mandel couldn't turn it down if he wanted to. It's a job that will take him to the highest orbits and into the most secretive of corporate enclaves to learn the truth behind the attacks on the Evans clan and the company they hold dear. He has a talent and they have a need. It's a match made in purgatory's shadow.

Mindstar Rising is quality science fiction that draws upon the conventions of the detective novel to create a compelling, high-tech thrillride. Originally published in 1993, it is the first entry in a trilogy conceived prior to the rise-to-dominance of the Internet and social media. And while this awkward timing leaves the piece feeling somewhat dated, like much of pre-millennial SciFi, the author is close enough for comfort. Even if one would wish to deduct points for his misses on the technology, Mr. Hamilton more than earns them back with his imagining of a future England savaged by Global Warming which, while discussed in 1993, certainly wasn't as ubiquitous a concern as it is today. His depiction of an overheated England is, to say the least, disturbing.

Though Mindstar Rising blends a solid plot with a decent mystery and seasons this mixture with interesting characters, flashy tech and a splash of sex, there's no doubt that the piece's unusual politics take center stage. In fitting collectivists with villainous black hats and then having the eccentric, ultra-capitalist billionaire ride in on his white steed to save the day, Mindstar Rising feels like a 1990s, science-fiction reinterpretation of Atlas Shrugged complete with all its unnuanced defenses of vulture capitalism. The author contends that he simply did not want to have fascists be the boogeymen for the umpteenth time and this is perfectly understandable. But what Mr. Hamilton seems to have missed here is that totalitarian regimes all desire to have power and to make war. They all invest in nationalistic symbols regardless of whether they are communist or fascist. The lengths Mr. Hamilton has gone to make the PSP seem bumbling and foolish compared to the unstoppable, inventive brilliance of his own Steve Jobs causes the piece to feel like a pretty lame argument for conservatism rather than a plausible glimpse into a dystopian future.

In any event, Greg Mandel is a fantastic hardman, a burdened man with a stained soul who finds a kind of redemption in Event Horizon. The author successfully animates both Mandel and his environment, investing them with sexy charm. I'll certainly be reading on. For while it's not Gibson, it's quality. (3/5 Stars)

Shetland Diaries by Simon King

From The Week of September 19, 2011

As Earth's ecology continues to deteriorate, humanity will be increasingly confronted by the unavoidable truths of species extinction and environmental collapse brought about by human profligacy. Such sins will be ignored for a little while longer, but not when sharks and whales, tigers and wolves, disappear from a world in which diversity is little more than a fleeting memory. And in that grayer world, in that world of concrete and glass, we will read books about past times, times in which man thought nothing of devoting his life to the simple, childlike enjoyment of watching animals. And amongst that pile of quiet, thoughtful literature will surely be this effort from Mr. King.

Shetland Diaries is a slim but heartfelt chronicle of two separate journeys, taken in 2008 and 2009, to Shetland, those most isolated of Scottish isles which, as the author points out early on, are nearer to the Arctic than to London. These twin adventures are undertaken by Mr. King, a British, wildlife filmmaker, who, together with his young family, enthusiastically endeavors to record seals and otters, puffins and storm petrels, in all their natural glory. Under normal circumstances, capturing such wildlife on camera should be a simple task, especially for one of Mr. King's expertise. But in the remote Shetlands, where the population is scarce, the winds fierce, and the shores lashed by the timeless fury of the northern Atlantic, such simple efforts become, for Mr.King, the things of Herculean legend, tales to be told to friends and family. Despite these challenges, the author manages to capture, for his British audiences back home, the beauty of life beyond civilization, that great diversity of existence that persists in the vastness of seas and skies too cold and too tumultuous for our soft, human liking.

Though Shetland Diaries is not without its flaws, Mr. King has succeeded in producing for his readers a thorough and entertaining travel log of a place few of them will ever see. For not only has he turned his naturalist's eye towards the various engaging species which populate, utilize and beautify Shetland with their glory, he is a keen observer of its buoyant and playful human culture which, unsurprisingly, is thickly seasoned with Nordic influences. Judiciously edited tales of their fun-filled festivals amuse as much as reconstructions of their salt-of-the-earth humanism warmed the cockles of this cynic's heart. But while Mr. King strikes the proper balance between the loveliness of nature, the wonder of animal behavior, and the kindness of down-home strangers, he has reserved too sizeable a portion of his tale for his own self-importance. For those of us who will never meet him, we care far more about seeing out through his eyes, not in towards his preoccupations, which are many, from his typically adorable child, to his, of course, lovely and patient wife. I'm sure Mr. King is a kind and generous soul, but I am here for the animals and the visuals, not for the vagaries of the author's home life, or the pratfalls of his technological setbacks.

Nonetheless, this remains work that both warms the heart and sobers the soul. For it exposes us to the best and the worst of humanity, our kindness and our destructiveness. In both exposing and re-enforcing this, Mr. King has done us all a service. (3/5 Stars)

How Bad Are Bananas by Mike Berners-lee

From The Week of August 28, 2011

A week does not go by in which we are not reminded of the price Earth pays for humanity's ongoing existence. From mining to deforestation, from oceans polluted by our garbage to landmasses remade for our crops, the cost of civilization is everywhere and, as much as some wish it otherwise, impossible to ignore. But while there is little we can do to put an end to this exploitation, short of returning to the darkness of pre-industrial agrarian life, we can make small changes that may help slow the rate at which we devour the planet. Rather than the guilt and outrage characteristic of large swaths of environmentalist writing, this spirit of pragmatism is what fuses this effort from Mr. Berners-lee.

How Bad Are Bananas is a dogged investigation of the carbon footprint of our everyday practices. From the cars and trains that transport us to the cellphones and laptops that keep us connected, Mr. Berners-Lee meticulously calculates the cost, in greenhouse gases, of producing our food, treating our waste, entertaining our minds, and cleaning our homes. In this, he uncovers a number of fascinating truths that have the power to surprise. For instance, best estimates put cellphone use at less than 1 percent of our total, carbon output per year, vanishingly small for a device owned and used by more than a quarter of the human population. But as much as cellphones, televisions and dishwashers surprise with their economy of carbon output, staples like rice and cheese join newspapers and light-rail trains in a category of products that astonish with their carbon costliness. In some cases, cheese actually produces more CO2E than meat and rice, meanwhile, is only fractionally better than cement, a flabbergasting result which is sure to stun the environmental laity.

But as much as there are surprising results among the products chronicled here, How Bad Are Bananas does not overturn the basic truths about carbon emissions, mainly, that transportation and livestock grown for human production combine to represent an eye-popping percentage of anthropogenic carbon. So while Mr. Berners-Lee helps his readers to understand the small ways in which they can shrink their carbon footprints, the alternately frustrating and depressing reality remains, that, short of grounding our planes, junking our cars and swearing off meat, there is precious little we can do to slow down the CO2 juggernaut that threatens to transform our world.

This is admirably researched work that does what all educational pamphlets should do, entertain and enlighten. I would have appreciated a more thorough effort from the author to compare the products listed here with one another, or perhaps to rate, as a percent of global carbon use, each product so that the reader could have easily measured them against other activities. Instead, each product was measured in kilograms or pounds of emissions, a measurement which means precious little to the average reader. Nonetheless, this is an instructive read. (3/5 Stars)

Dirt by David R. Montgomery

From The Week of August 07, 2011

Humanity is beset by dualities. North and south, liberal and conservative, rich and poor... Philosophically, politically, and even geographically, we find polarities everywhere we look. And so it should not be a surprise to find the same polarized forces at play in the study of our species. Futurist scholars disregard what has come before to focus on what's to come next while historian scholars reject the future to focus on the past. While Mr. Montgomery is undoubtedly an adherent to the latter, historian camp, Dirt is an intriguing attempt to bridge the gap between past and future under the umbrella of a single, logical premise.

Civilizations live and die on the health of their soil. For there is nothing more fundamental to the functioning of any civilization than a steady supply of food, or so argues Mr. Montgomery. Great empires from the Romans to the Mayans have expanded to meet their food supply, only to crash when either that food supply is cut off, or when political instabilities, created as a result of expansion, bring them down. People must eat. And if they cannot eat, they will not sit idly by and waste away to death; they will fight wars for the resources they require.

After laying out this theory of civilization extinction, Mr. Montgomery investigates the soil itself: its properties, its systems, and most importantly its limitations. For as farmers have known for centuries, soil can be exhausted by heavy use. What hasn't been common knowledge until recently is why. Enter the relentlessly scientific Charles Darwin who discovered that earthworms are a vital component in healthy soil, creatures capable of enlivening rocky mush into nutrient-rich earth for plants and crops. Building from this idea, Mr. Montgomery goes on to explain the methods used to work the land, how those methods have improved over time, how the yields from the land have grown to fit an expanding population, and, finally, how humanity is about to reach the land's capacity to feed all of its exploiters.

Parts science, history, memoir, and environmentalism, Dirt is a wonderful look into a world that we all take for granted. We all enjoy the products of civilization: cellphones, airplanes, restaurants, and movie theatres. But Mr. Montgomery successfully argues that all of these trappings come about as a result of the health of our soil. Without that, there is no food. And if there's no food, there's no people. And if there's no people, there's certainly no Iphone. What's more, what humans take for granted they have a tendency to abuse. We have made unique changes to Earth, modifying it in ways that can only be labelled experimental. What began 10,000 years ago with the agricultural revolution lives on, today, in a population that has exploded out to seven billion purely on the back of the capacity of the land to feed them. But none of the practices we have used to feed that population are natural or sustainable.

Mr. Montgomery does an excellent job of explaining how this has come to pass and offers researched ideas for how it can be mended for the future. For one thing seems clear. If we exhaust the soil, if we have no other way of growing food, nothing else matters. Billions of people will starve and die, all because of the health of something we consider dirty. (4/5 Stars)