Cary Neeper's Blog: Reviewing World-changing Nonfiction, page 11

Al Gore’s The Future--a review

The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change by Al Gore: New York, Random House, 2013, a New York times bestseller. As former Vice President and member of both the House of Representatives and the Senate, as author of An Inconvenient Truth, a member of Apple Inc. board of directors, chairman of Generation Investment Management, chairman of the nonprofit Climate Reality Project, al Gore is no stranger to business, government or environmental concerns.

This latest book provides a treasure for anyone concerned about our current dilemmas. In unvarnished, direct language, Gore explores environmental, economic and political issues. He presents the facts, sometimes a brief history, and digs deep into the reasons behind our failure to agree on solutions that he believes, passionately, must be implemented soon. The consequences of inaction are made clear, and they are dire.

This book was in development for eight years by Gore, his research team, business associates and distinguished reviewers, including Jared Diamond, E. O. Wilson and Herman Daly. Besides 373 pages of compelling text, the book includes an invaluable eight pages of Bibliography, 144 pages of usefully titled Notes, and a detailed Index.

The credibility of Gore’s arguments are enhanced by his understanding of complex systems and a balanced approach to each topic. He makes his own views crystal clear while exploring relevant evidence without overloading the reader with data. An example is his description of Earth’s wind and water currents that are involved in the experience of climate change (pages 305-311). Gore argues that though we prohibit “...human experimentation that puts lives at risk...”, we are engaging in a deadly global “unplanned experiment” as we continue to dump CO2 into the atmosphere.

Of particular interest to me is his analysis of why we cannot agree on such important issues. He covers many. A brief look at the Index can tell you if your topic of concern is
covered. The range of possibilities for the future is huge, introduced in each section by extensive topic organizing diagrams. The concluding paragraphs “So What Do We Do Now?” (page 367) recap his most urgent tasks, if we face the fact that we humans are now “...a geologic and evolutionary force...” on Earth.

If the United State of America is to provide leadership to the global community, Gore insists that we must reform “...legislative rules that allow a small minority to halt legislation in the U. S. Senate” and “...limit the role of money in politics...”. The latter is a positive feedback loop, a recipe for disaster well known in physics and studies of complex systems.

Reading Al Gore's THE FUTURE--Six Drivers of Global Change

In the Introduction, Gore summarizes the current trends that provide challenges for how we make choices for the future: the global economy, electronic communications, a new balance of political, economic and military power, unsustainable growth, powerful new science technologies, and the emergence of a new relationship between human civilization and Earth's ecology.

The details he provides in the first 100 pages range from new technology to internet influences and the problems with current economics and Citizens United. Looks like this will be a valuable resource for anyone writing about our prospects for the future.

I'm especially encouraged by his understanding of how complexity impacts these issues and by the extensive Bibliography, Index and Notes he provides.The Future: Six Drivers of Global ChangeAl Gore

Nuclear Power: Both Sides--An Old Review For Current Concerns

Nuclear Power: Both Sides:The Arguments For and Against the Most Controversial Technology by Michio Kaku and Jennifer Trainer Thompson (Editor), Norton, 1990.

This is a collection of twenty-one essays, written by authors with differing opinions about the dangerous effects of radiation, waste disposal, reactor safety and nuclear economics. Solar, fusion and breeder reactors are also discussed.

For the Christian Science Monitor, I noted that with few exceptions, facts were presented fairly and opinions made clear without self-serving exaggeration. Chapter are preceded by useful introductions. In view of our current energy concerns, this book may have more than just historical significance.

Michio Kaku, professsor of Theoretical Physics at the City University of New York, is also author of a fascinating book Physics of the Future--How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100. I'm referencing this book for my realistic scifi, modeling how we might secure the future. See http://archivesofvarok.com

Review and Author Suggestions—Signs of Life

Review and Author Suggestions— Signs of Life: How Complexity Pervades Biology
(Ricard Solé and Brian Goodwing, New York: Basic Books, 2000.)

This book is a comprehensive review, showing biological systems as examples of complexity. As writers, when we understand what it means to be complex, we gain a valuable perspective on human life that can drive our character development and plotting. (Mathematical treatments of the problems are set off in separate boxes from the text, which leaves the book accessible to non-scientists.

Solé and Goodwin define complexity as the difference between two independent systems when they modify each other. They exhibit power laws (few big events and progressively more events as things get smaller), nonlinearity, collective behavior, fractal structure, unpredictability and random fluctuations that result in symmetry-breaking. The authors then review the workings of complexity in everything from genes to traffic jams. the genes' roles, they say, are to stabilize patterns of emergent complexity.

In studying emergence, the authors stress that it is essential to study details of the parts as well as high-level dynamics. One example is the fact that brain patterns and cardiac disease with orderly patterns are indicative of disease. Chaos indicated health, health being an emergent phenomenon of the body.

Another discussion reflects Stuart Kaufmann's observations that natural selection works with self-organization in biology, resulting in evolution. this is a nice analogy for human interactions that could drive a story.

Two mechanisms of the origin of life could also suggest plots--closed chains of reactions among cooperating individuals and random reactions between people who network.

Don't let the scientific jargon throw you. A lot of complexity definitions could be labeled simple common sense. Scientists don't like the fact that unpredictability looms large in complex systems, which is great news for us writers. For more details, definitions and examples of complex phenomena, see my notes compiled from a course for nonscientists I taught a few years ago. There on my web site http://caryneeper.com.

Violence the Norm? Fiction Provides Powerful Images That Stick

Fiction can provide powerful images that change minds; imprinting can result in a lifetime of believing violence is normal. I’m seriously worried about the current obsession with violence and dystopia.

Since I’m so critical, I thought I’d better get educated. My granddaughters watch and read it. They were eager to show me the “Hunger Games” movie, so I sat through the jiggling camera that is supposed to dilute the violence of the games. I was still horrified by the dystopian premise and teen blood-letting, even though the idea is to criticize current TV games.

How about some hope for Christmas? I’m shamelessly providing my award winning book The Webs of Varok to consider for your Holiday giving. It’s not just crass commercialism. Why not a fun story that includes some positive suggestions for securing a stable future? Take a look at a few excerpts below:

“...there are rumors of an Earth launch—more humans coming to Varok.”
“Rumors? Orram and Conn can continue blathering to Earth about water conservation. That doesn’t mean anything to us. But if humans do manage to get here, we must be ready to snuff them out before Conn can raise a fin.”

“Snuff them out? How?” Gitahl’s patches strained to find Mahntik’s true mind. “Let me be clear. Surely you wouldn’t use the diseases you’ve engineered on humans.”

“Why not? I’d use them to keep ahlork in line—even varoks.”

The ahlork Nidok appears on the cover of the Webs. He is one of our heroes, of sorts.
Conn the elll notes to human Tandra that female ahlork have bright blue scales.

“Better not call them birds,” Orram said. “Varok’s small avioids don’t have such a distinguished ancestry as Earth’s.”

“No dinosaurs?”

“Not enough heat or light out here. And ahlork are built differently than birds, like tanks with external hard parts.”

“Insectoids then.”

Orram’s sense of fun surfaced. “No, no, Tandra. Bad biologist.”

He waved an invitation, and with a clatter of broad, plated wings, the ahlork came toward us, swooping low over two elder varoks sitting nearby. One varok grimaced and ducked ever so lightly in revulsion. The ahlork noticed, circled, and made another pass at him.

I felt a surge of mirth. Orram warned me to stifle it, but the ahlork had already seen my wavering smile. He flapped toward me and landed on my head, then peered down into my tear-filled eyes. I burst into laughter despite the dig of his talons.

“You are nothing more than an elll, with all that shaking and grimacing, First-Human-Being-On-Varok,” the ahlork said...

The blue-plated ahlork standing on the floor spoke in a voice broken with foam. “Surely Earth be beautiful. Not this heap of ruins. Why do you come to Varok?”

One more excerpt. The Webs of Varok is a model of what it takes for humans to do long-term survival, based on the nonfiction text Enough Is Enough: Building a Sustainable Economy in a World of Finite Resources by Rob Dietz and Dan O’Neill.
The issues are challenging, good for Book Club discussion. Here’s one we can all agree on:
“I thought manufacturers are required to take responsibility for their products throughout their entire lifetime, including final disposal or recycling. So much of this cloth must be disposed of, every cycle. How do they pay the cost, with such low prices?”

“I have often wondered,” Orserah said.

“It’s as though the weavers wanted the cloth to wear out quickly—so we would buy more.”

I felt the blood drain from my face. “You have just defined planned obsolescence, an old trick on Earth—one of the favorites when business ethics turned sour in the interest of profits.”

Check out http://archivesofvarok.com for more excerpts and information about the series.
Enough Is Enough: Building a Sustainable Economy in a World of Finite ResourcesRob Dietz ]

A New Book for Self-Actualization in the 21st Century

Resilient Ministry: What Pastors Told Us About Surviving and Thriving, Bob Burns, Tasha D. Chapman and Donald C. Guthrie, Illinois, Intervarsity Press, 2013.

This is a book for anyone interested in personal growth. Based on seven years of research and “...heartfelt discussions about the challenges of vocational ministry...,” this book's ”...summary and analysis of those discussions in light of ...literature research and experiences...” serves to inform all of us. By focusing on its quotations and stories, we can all learn something about how to live our lives and grow in resilience.

In the introduction, the authors give us an unusual tip: “...consider reading the final chapter first [to] consider some strategies for putting the book to work in your life.” I would add, “no matter what your personal, occupational, or cultural challenges are.”

To give you a sample of the useful ideas for reflection, here are a few quotes: “...the term cultural intelligence describes the ability ‘to function effectively across various cultural contexts.’” The authors expand the idea in a full chapter, suggesting that we live in a world of “...people who have radically different perspectives....” This requires that we communicate clearly and take into account differences without giving offense, while respecting and appreciating those differences. One pastor is quoted: “We say we want to be multicultural, but we don’t want to change. We want others to adapt to us...How do I ...develop a bigger, broader understanding?”

Two other ideas that struck me focus on the need to distinguish “...ourselves from our jobs...” and our allies from our confidants. I suspect that this book would offer something different for each of us. It provides rare insights from the field of ministry that have universal value, no matter who we think we are.
Resilient Ministry: What Pastors Told Us about Surviving and Thriving

Temple Grandin's Talk At ALA

While at the American Library Assoc. conference in Chicago last spring, Shawne Workman, my publisher, and I heard Temple Grandin speak. In clear, straight talk she outlined the theme of her new book with its straight-on directive to parents and teachers--as soon as you get a diagnosis, get busy and help the child become verbal, put in twenty or more hours a week. Then when they are old enough, be sure you teach them simple job skills. Above, all encourage their strengths and quit focusing on their weaknesses. Every brain is unique.

After the speech, people got up, both teachers and autistic students, to say that they had never heard such useful advice. Grandin has clarified autism of every variety so it need no longer be a frightening mystery.

In my vote for BOTY I said, "This book is a game-changer, must-read for everyone to understand the complexity of the human brain and its uniqueness in every individual, for teachers and parents to provide a game plan to realize a child's best potential, for human society to encourage opportunities for individuals that could serve the future most creatively."The Autistic Brain: Thinking Across the Spectrum

Recommending "Life As We Do Not Know It" and "Rare Earth"

I just found Peter Ward’s second book Life As We Do Not Know It: The NASA Search For (and Synthesis of) Alien Life, New York and around the world, Penguin Group, 2005. In this book Ward considers life itself—what it is, where in the universe it might be, and however it might be re-invented here soon.

After I finish reading it, I might review Life... in more depth, but for now I‘m recommending it and its prequel Rare Earth: Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe, Peter D. Ward and Donald Brownlee, New York, Springer-Verlag, 2000. Both books give us an in-depth, open arguments that make a lot of sense to me.

1) The authors’ Rare Earth Hypothesis is based on credible astronomical and biochemical possibilities, suggesting that microbial life is easy “...to evolve from non life...and...should be found widely throughout habitable planets and moons in the cosmos, while complex animals and plants are very rare. Not only are they relatively fragile, requiring “narrow environmental conditions to survive,” they need long-term stability in habitable conditions in order to evolve.

Rare Earth was disliked by SETI and science fiction fans, who ignored the book’s emphasis on the observation that “...simple life should be common.” Ward and Brownlee argued that a long period of habitability required for the evolution of complex, large, oxygen-powered animals was made difficult by a long list of astronomical accidents and “...new information from oceanography, geology and paleontology” that has created the new science called astrobiology.

I’m looking forward to finishing Life As We Do No Know It because Peter Ward is a realist. He readily explores all the options he can muster. In Rare Earth he and Brownlee note that the huge numbers of stars and “their inevitable planets” make the existence of the “intelligent civilizations [in the universe] a near inevitability.” However, the huge distances and time considerations make any contact, even detection, between such civilizations highly unlikely. I believe Carl Sagan did us no favors with his optimism, though the continued SETI search is certainly worth doing, IF we can afford the resources it requires. A big IF as we consider our limits.

As a realist, Ward begins Life... by observing that the universe is so large and diverse, it is “...reasonable to suppose that all manners of life are possible,” but it is also possible that there “...might not be anything except carbon based life-forms, [and] DNA might not be ...just one way but the only way.” We are a sample of one, but we’ve learned enough about physics, astronomy and biochemistry in the last few decades to be realistic about both diverse universality and down-to-Earth chemical probabilities.

I look forward to finishing Ward’s consideration of what life is, here, there and soon to be reinvented. In many labs around the world, scientists are using a variety of approaches to recreate life—everything from re-inventing from scratch to imitating how selection working with self-organizing properties of matter (Some call it the hand of God.) precipitated life on Earth.
Life as We Do Not Know It: The NASA Search for (and Synthesis of) Alien Life
Rare Earth: Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe

Reviewing A Book About Writing Reviews

“With more than 40,000 new books published each year in the United State, no reader, however enthusiastic, can possibly read more than a small percentage of them.” Thus begins editor Sylvia E. Kamerman’s book "Book Reviewing," ed. by Sylvia E. Kamerman, Boston, The Writer, Inc., 1978.

Now, how many books are published each year? Bowker reports a 60% rise in self-published books since 2011, five time more than in 2007. Berrett-Koehler reports that new print titles issued by U. S, publishers was 316,480 in 2010 and total books published was over three million, plus 2.7 million of “non-traditional” titles (including those self-published). http://www.bkpextranet.com/AuthorMate...

So--is reviewing books a hopeless endeavor now, or even more essential as an invaluable assist for those who love books? I believe that the more books are published the more essential it is to review the good ones. Therefore, I’m reviewing Kamerman’s book as a valuable how-to-do-it guide for people writing various types of reviews, from short descriptions to critical essays.

Book Reviewing is “A guide to writing book reviews for newspapers, magazines, radio, and television—by leading book editors, critics, and reviewers,” twenty-one experts who describe their experiences and summarize their advice. They each have a unique perspective, but they all agree on a few general guidelines. Their opinions only differ on whether or not a reviewer should read other reviews of the same book.

All agree that a reviewer should stick to a special interest in order to reliably compare the book reviewed to the author’s other titles and to similar books by other authors. Without summarizing the plot or premise in detail, the review should provide basic information about the book and its author, its content and style, and whether or not the author succeeded in fulfilling the intended goal. Quotations are useful to illustrate these points, as are comparisons with other books and authors.

Four of Kamerman’s expert reviewers deal with the special problem of reviewing children’s books. Since they are most often bought by adults (primarily by librarians in 1978) the reviewer is challenged to consider the adults' views of accuracy, issues and psychology, while focusing primarily on "literary and artistic merit." Now, with so many books sold online, that may be changing.

To put it simply—in no more than 600 words (twice that for critical essays), the reviewer should focus on what the book offers the reader. Above all, a review should be about the book reviewed, not about the reviewer.

L. E. Sissman of The Atlantic presents his advice as a list of Don’ts, making these points: Don’t review books written by friends or by enemies. Review only those books you care about, ignoring jacket copy and what other reviewers have said. Read twice a carefully chosen book in your area of expertise (making notes). Always be kind in evaluating four basic elements—the plot or premise, pace, style and characterizations. When you understand what the author set out to do, use you best judgment to explain how well the book succeeds and why.

Reviewing Brian Czech's Supply Shock

Wildlife ecologist and conservation biologist Brian Czech takes us on a readable and essential tour of economics—its history, its foibles, and its coming salvation, what some have called a Full-Earth Economy, one that recognizes the limits to resources in a world with seven billion Homo sapiens.

In a careful analysis of the impact of economic policy on politics and our natural world, Czech offers solutions that seem, not only reasonable, but necessary and inevitable if we are to revert to a pleasant long-term existence in a comfortable world of sharing and conservation.

In a thorough discussion of our current situation, the literature, and various reactions to economic dilemmas, Czech demonstrates that growth now erodes our ecological foundations. He doesn’t miss discussing any of the caveats, like technology as salvation. He demonstrates clearly that technology also has costs, but can be selective, developed only when it adds to the efficiency of end use.

To the charge that steady state economics is stagnation--he points out that stability and minimal throughput set us free as we share and ease back creatively, with time to live more engaged lives. This is a must-read for anyone interested in everything from the future and economics to ecology.Supply Shock: Economic Growth at the Crossroads and the Steady State Solution