Thursday, December 26, 2013
Simon Van Booy, Everything Beautiful Began After
The author brings Rebecca, Henry, and George together. The characters find love and keep friends despite this alienated world of ours and the presence of almost a fourth character: Cruel Fate.
"If F. Scott Fitzgerald and Marguerite Dumas had had a son, he would be Simon Van Booy," writes reviewer Andre Dubus III.
This novel is a real page turner.
Thursday, December 5, 2013
Rachel Carson
William Souder, the author of On a Farther Shore: The Life and Legacy of Rachel Carson, has written a graceful biography of one of the most important women of the twentieth century. Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring, published in 1962, started the environmental movement.
Carson wrote about how the overuse of pesticides threatened all life on earth. She was writing at a time when many atomic tests were taking place in the atmosphere and the public was already alert to the concept of contamination of the environment.
These two threats, atomic radiation and pesticides, have never gone away. The situation at Fukushima in Japan is unresolved as of this writing. Radioactive water from the nuclear disaster is still poisoning the sea. Secondly, many believe that the mass die-offs of bees all around the world are a result of their poisoning by insecticides.
It may come as a surprise to some that Carson was already familiar with the problem of global warming and the rising level of the sea. Scientists had already noticed the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere due to the burning of fossil fuels, the greenhouse effect, and the consequent melting of the polar ice caps.
Souder's book came out for the 50th anniversary of Silent Spring. The climate change deniers still don't think there is anything to worry about. They believe the environmentalists are deluded left wingers. In other words, what should be matters of fact have become politicized. I have to wonder where humanity, at this slow rate of progress, will be 50 years from now.
Carson wrote about how the overuse of pesticides threatened all life on earth. She was writing at a time when many atomic tests were taking place in the atmosphere and the public was already alert to the concept of contamination of the environment.
These two threats, atomic radiation and pesticides, have never gone away. The situation at Fukushima in Japan is unresolved as of this writing. Radioactive water from the nuclear disaster is still poisoning the sea. Secondly, many believe that the mass die-offs of bees all around the world are a result of their poisoning by insecticides.
It may come as a surprise to some that Carson was already familiar with the problem of global warming and the rising level of the sea. Scientists had already noticed the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere due to the burning of fossil fuels, the greenhouse effect, and the consequent melting of the polar ice caps.
Souder's book came out for the 50th anniversary of Silent Spring. The climate change deniers still don't think there is anything to worry about. They believe the environmentalists are deluded left wingers. In other words, what should be matters of fact have become politicized. I have to wonder where humanity, at this slow rate of progress, will be 50 years from now.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)