Under a White Sky (2021) by Elizabeth Kolbert

Book Review

Under a Whilte Sky (2021)

by Elizabeth Kolbert

   Elizabeth Kolbert is a writer for the New Yorker.  Generally speaking, non-fiction works by writers from/for the New York and/or the Atlantic Monthly occupy the slots of what you might call "serious non-fiction science writing."  It's a genre that tends to appeal to politically liberal and well-educated folks, other non fiction audiences having less of an interest in all things scientific.   The theme in this volume is man-make attempts to remedy the catastrophic effects of man-made climate change.  Obviously, Kolbert is a skeptic of every step of the path which leads from our past/present to a future where government's spray dust into the upper atmosphere to cool the surface temperature. 

  Half of the book just sets up the chapters on geo-engineering by looking at past efforts to remedy man-made climate disaster, with a memorable chapter on the Asian carp infiltration of the Great Lakes/Mississippi river eco-systems.  The climate engineering chapters range from the seemingly benign (pumping carbon dioxide back into the ground to turn it into rock) to Strangelovian and/or resembling the actual back-story to the Snowpiercer media property, which goes curiously unreferenced in the pages long interviews with climate scientists that pepper the pages. 

   If you look at climate change from a historical perspective we are no doubt doomed, see the role of climate degradation in the collapse of every pre-modern civilization that didn't make it into the modern era.  Cutting down all the trees, mismanaging the ground water, wasteful agricultural practices- the history is as old as humanity itself. 

Germs (2021) by Richard Wolheim

New York Review of Books cover art for Germs by Richard Wolheim

Book Review

Germs (2021)

by Richard Wolheim

    Squarely within the genre of rich lonely boy memoirs, Germs, by Richard Wolheim is a late comer to the genre.  Wolheim was a reknowned 20th century philosopher, known for his so-called "paradox of democracy" (a voter wants his or her candidate to win but also wants the candidate with the most votes to win even if it is not their candidate.)  Wolheim is also credited with coining the term "minimalism," in his essay, Minimal Art. He was finishing up Germs, the memoir of his precious childhood, when he died in 2001.  Germs was published in 2004.

 

   I didn't have any plan or reason for reading Germs other than the publisher being New York Review of Books.   I highlighted this passage, which really gives you the vibe for the whole book:

One morning, over two decades ago, in the course of what were to prove for me ten very consequential days teaching in Boulder, Colorado, I had the distinct feeling that I was about to start work on this memoir in earnest. The desire to write it had been with me for a year or so, ever since I had reluctantly abandoned another project, which was a novel about life in the servants’ hall of a large Irish country house, upon which the Empress Elizabeth of Austria, the wife of Franz Josef, descends with her own retinue, including courtiers, grooms, ladies’ maids, and her favourite “pilot” in the hunting field. The novel would tell of the carnival that followed, servants aping their masters, mistresses corrupting their maids, and the seed for it had been sown in a bookshop where I had leafed through a popular biography of the Empress, which contained in a paragraph or so a description of her visit to Ireland.

   If you liked the texture of that paragraph, you will love the rest.