Naomi Oreskes

God knows I’ve written a few crass or aggressive reviews before but I’m not even going to review this one — I don’t know if I could stop myself from offending everyone, even those in agreement. The problem is not the book — it’s well done and probably every American should read it. It’s just that I spent 20 years of my life as a 3-pack per day smoker — of Camel unfiltered no less. I quit cold turkey in August 2006, but I’ve had a number of relatives die from the cancers they got from lifetimes of smoking and even though I was cognizant of a number of things in the book, reading this info, this tale laid out so well by the author comes close to sending me over the edge. I’m not going to say anymore except that I do recommend this book.… (more)

"The Collapse of Western Civilization" is probably more of a long magazine article rather than a short book, but in either case, is an interesting prediction made by the authors of what the future could look like if world governments fail to take steps to reduce continued carbon emissions into our atmosphere. The authors write as if they are historians from several hundred years in the future, looking back and trying to explain how past governments (e.g., our current leaders) could have ignored the known science of the day and failed to take the necessary steps to prevent global climate change. The premise of the book is that greenhouse gasses continued to accumulate in the atmosphere during our time, and that the deleterious effects of those emissions led to wide-spread flooding around the world due to sea level rise; water and food supply issues; and other predicted climate changes. It's an interesting twist to the climate change debate, e.g., not looking at what the future might be like from our perspective, but looking back at today's decisions made or not made from our great-great-great-grandchildren's perspective.… (more)