| View Larger Image | Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change | Paperbackby Elizabeth Kolbert (Author)
| List Price: | $13.95 | | Price: | $5.58 | | You Save: | $8.37 (60%) | | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours |
| | Binding: | Paperback | | Publisher: | Bloomsbury USA | | Edition: | 1stst Edition | | Page Count: | 240 Pages | | Publication Date: | December 26, 2006 | | Sales Rank: | 16,055th |
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
Long known for her insightful and thought-provoking political journalism, author Elizabeth Kolbert now tackles the controversial and increasingly urgent subject of global warming. In what began as groundbreaking three-part series in the New Yorker, for which she won a National Magazine Award in 2006, Kolbert cuts through the competing rhetoric and political agendas to elucidate for Americans what is really going on with the global environment and asks what, if anything, can be done to save our planet. Now updated and with a new afterword, Field Notes from a Catastrophe is the book to read on the defining issue and greatest challenge of our times. |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 53 reviews)
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well worth reading by believer in magic and miracles (Brownfield, ME USA)  5 Stars
July 18, 2009
I don't do science easily and this books covers science in a way I could comprenhend. A talent to be able to do this type of writing for us lay people. I learned from this. We are in a scary time and we don't know the answers. The author worked with, talked to the experts and pulled this book together. I challenge you to read it for yourself and see how you feel about where we are.
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actually interesting... by W. Li 5 Stars
June 13, 2009
I read this book for my history class and surprisingly I found this book very interesting; easy read and too the point.
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Elegantly written and monumentally depressing by Doc Occula (Los Angeles, California) 5 Stars
June 06, 2009
I know some think semi-lightweight essay-style nonfiction like this book is 'bad for you' - that a textbook packed with hard science and no prose is the order of the day. I disagree, for the fundamental reason that if one book like this one gets in the hands of one person reading it idly in the airport or in a coffee shop, and it creates enough of an impression to cause that person to make some change, then it's done it's job. The writing is fluid and compelling; the author's eye for the tiny moment, as well as the big picture, is acute; and even though the information is, at this point, almost 4 years old, it is, of course, as urgent as ever.
I have a caveat, though. None of us like to have global warming staring us in the face, much less voluntarily reading a paperback about it. We investigate further because we want to know the truth - and the truth is, as I said above, monumentally depressing. This book is flat-out depressing. I read a chapter and I have bad dreams. I read another chapter and I ponder the futility of living for the next thirty years. So my caveat is this: read at your own peril. Make plans to do something proactive and positive each time you pick up this work. Don't just dwell on the facts as laid out before us. Do something. I know, I know, we're bombarded with exhortations at a constant rate - buy a car with better mileage, recycle your pizza boxes, hug a tree - but it truly is up to us to consider the consequences.
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A clear warning by J. Robert Gibson (Hong Kong) 5 Stars
April 16, 2009
An excellent, brief, readable summary of the evidence for global warming, its scientific explanation, its consequences and the sorry history of our leaders' response to the problem over the last thirty years. The anecdotes and character sketches of the scientists involved bring the issues to life.
The weakness of the book is the lack of pictures and colour graphics to complement the excellent writing. Let us hope that the next edition will remedy this and bring the book to a wider audience.
Paraphrasing the last two paragraphs of the book to show its excellence:
'Ice cores show the last glaciation was a time of frequent and traumatic climate swings. During that period, humans who were, genetically speaking, just like ourselves produced nothing permanent other than isolated cave paintings and large piles of mastodon bones. Then, 10,000 years ago the climate settled down and so did we, building towns and inventing agriculture, metallurgy, writing and the other technologies that future civilisation would rely upon. These developments would not have been possible without human ingenuity, but, until the climate cooperated, ingenuity, it seems, wasn't enough.'
'Ice core records also show that the earth will soon be hotter than it has been at any time since our species evolved. The feedbacks that have been identified in the climate system - the ice-albedo feedback, the water vapour feedback, the feedback between temperatures and carbon storage in the permafrost - take small changes to the system and amplify them into much larger forces. Perhaps the most unpredictable feedback of all is the human one. With six billion people, the risks are everywhere apparent. A disruption in monsoon patters, a shift in ocean currents, a major drought - any one of these could easily produce millions of refugees. Will we find an adequate global response to global warming or will we retreat into ever narrower and more destructive forms of self interest? It may seem impossible to imagine that a technologically advanced society could choose, in essence, to destroy itself, but that is what we are now in the process of doing.'
Read the whole book for the compelling story behind this message.
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A LUCID HUMAN ACCOUNT OF THE BEGINING OF THE END OF THE WORLD by Skullthorpe (Australia)  4 Stars
March 26, 2009
I recommend this book to any casual reader who needs an introduction to the nature and scope of the environmental catastrophe we are experiencing.
It is less densely informative and grindingly depressing than Tim Flannery"s 'The Weather Makers' which is the best book I have read so far on the subject of climate change.
It puts a human face on the problem without sacrificing the breadth of the problem or its grave nature. More journalistic in approach than many comparable books the author does not fall into the trap of the sensational statistic and goshwowism that besets many laypersons writing popular science. The otherwise excellent Bill Bryson comes to mind here.
By telling the story of climate change from the field rather than a general context the information is easier to assimilate because it has a human face.
Refreshingly the author does not spill to much ink on the subject of the opportunist criminal greed heads, who against all scientific evidence, tried to discredited the study of climate change for so long. The transnational corporations and their political servants are past masters at this and such behavior was expected (the issues of tobacco,leaded petrol and CFCs come to mind).
So I urge you to read this book. It offers no solutions (because there aren't any)but gives you a human and lucid exposition of the problems that beset us.
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