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I WANT A BETTER CATASTROPHE

Name: I WANT A BETTER CATASTROPHE
Author: Andrew Boyd
ISBN: 9780865719835

NAVIGATING THE CLIMATE CRISIS WITH GRIEF, HOPE, AND GALLOWS HUMOR

by Andrew Boyd ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 14, 2023

Urgent, sobering reading.

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Envisioning the planet’s dire future.

Writer, humorist, and longtime activist Boyd describes himself as a “tragic optimist,” “can-do pessimist,” and “compassionate nihilist” when he considers efforts to reverse or mitigate environmental devastation. His “can-do” spirit led to his joining many activist groups and launching the Climate Clock, which “counts down the time remaining to prevent global warming rising above 1.5°C (currently six and a half years and closing), while simultaneously tracking our progress on key solution pathways (renewable energy, Indigenous land sovereignty, and others).” Realizing, though, that others may be so overcome with despair that activism seems futile, he offers this book as “a small head start on the grieving process—and some help answering the question, What is still worth doing?” An appendix lists nearly 40 organizations with which readers can engage. Boyd includes interviews with eight “hopers and doomers,” including Robin Wall Kimmerer, who explain their responses to the crisis. Climate scientist Guy McPherson predicts human extinction; eco-Buddhist Joanna Macy entitled her book Active Hope. Gopal Dayaneni, co-founder of the think tank Movement Generation, debunks the “Green scenario” because it “allows us to indulge the fiction that we can technologically innovate our way out of the crisis; that progress is inevitable.” Psychoanalyst Jamey Hecht believes it is possible “to know the worst and still be happy.” Boyd cautiously concurs: “While it’s too late to prevent catastrophe, if we step up our game, we can still build a new, more decent society on the ashes of the old.” All of the author’s evidence points to the inadequacy of capitalism and politics. Individual actions—recycling, a plant-based diet, biking and walking rather than driving—are not useless, but community is crucial for meaningful change. “We not only have the capacity to transform the world towards greater equity, justice, diversity, and integrity,” Gopal tells Boyd, but “if you look around, you’ll see that we are actually exercising that capacity everywhere.”

Urgent, sobering reading.

Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2023

ISBN: 9780865719835

Page Count: 416

Publisher: New Society Publishers

Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2022

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2022

Categories:

- PERSPECTIVES
Books That Offer Some Hope on the Climate Crisis

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WHAT THIS COMEDIAN SAID WILL SHOCK YOU

by Bill Maher ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 21, 2024

Maher calls out idiocy wherever he sees it, with a comedic delivery that veers between a stiletto and a sledgehammer.

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The comedian argues that the arts of moderation and common sense must be reinvigorated.

Some people are born snarky, some become snarky, and some have snarkiness thrust upon them. Judging from this book, Maher—host of HBO’s Real Time program and author of The New New Rules and When You Ride Alone, You Ride With bin Laden—is all three. As a comedian, he has a great deal of leeway to make fun of people in politics, and he often delivers hilarious swipes with a deadpan face. The author describes himself as a traditional liberal, with a disdain for Republicans (especially the MAGA variety) and a belief in free speech and personal freedom. He claims that he has stayed much the same for more than 20 years, while the left, he argues, has marched toward intolerance. He sees an addiction to extremism on both sides of the aisle, which fosters the belief that anyone who disagrees with you must be an enemy to be destroyed. However, Maher has always displayed his own streaks of extremism, and his scorched-earth takedowns eventually become problematic. The author has something nasty to say about everyone, it seems, and the sarcastic tone starts after more than 300 pages. As has been the case throughout his career, Maher is best taken in small doses. The book is worth reading for the author’s often spot-on skewering of inept politicians and celebrities, but it might be advisable to occasionally dip into it rather than read the whole thing in one sitting. Some parts of the text are hilarious, but others are merely insulting. Maher is undeniably talented, but some restraint would have produced a better book.

Maher calls out idiocy wherever he sees it, with a comedic delivery that veers between a stiletto and a sledgehammer.

Pub Date: May 21, 2024

ISBN: 9781668051351

Page Count: 384

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: March 5, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024

Categories:

POLITICS | CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | ISSUES & CONTROVERSIES | ENTERTAINMENT, SPORTS & CELEBRITY

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NEW NEW RULES
by Bill Maher

- BOOK REVIEW
TRUE STORY
by Bill Maher

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A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES

by Howard Zinn ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1979

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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.