Just Books

 

Busted! Where was the presumption of innocence when Cambridge police nabbed Henry Louis Gates on his own front porch last summer?  

by Charles Ogletree
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Independence Day in the Roberts' Court Era
by David Rakoff

 

 

Off-Color Thoughts on Fourth of July Fireworks 
by Eric Lane

 

Testing, Testing... What Exactly Does the Bar Exam Test?
Don't ask Michelle Obama, Franklin Roosevelt, or Hillary Clinton...
by Elizabeth Wurtzel

What book(s) would you recommend to somebody who wants a context in which to understand the BP Oil Spill and what's at stake in the Gulf?

Jonathan Schell, Author, Fate of the Earth: Standing behind the Gulf spill is the incomparably larger crisis of global warming, brought on not by the spill of oil the but burning of oil (products) in our cars and other devices. Recently, I've read two books on the subject that I'd like to commend. The first is Eaarth, by Bill Mckibben, which concentrates on the surprisingly extensive effects of global warming that have already occurred. As always with McKibben the recital of facts is accompanied by fresh thinking and writing of an exceptionally high order, rendering his writing a pleasure as well as a duty. The second is Six Degrees by Mark Lynas. It presents in a clear and readable way the best scientific evidence on what will occur to the natural and human order at each degree (centigrade) of warming, up to six. To any but the most thorough adepts of the subject, I believe the experience will be deeply shocking.

Elizabeth Kolbert, Author, Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change: Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes and Eric Conway, shows how the same deny-and-delay tactics employed by tobacco industry were used to try to cast doubt on climate science. It's a compelling and frightening read. Eaarth by Bill McKibben is a good update on the state of the planet, with a more hopeful coda. Jeff Goodell's How to Cool the Planet is a sober but at times also entertaining look at schemes to re-engineer the earth.

Bill McKibben, Author, Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet: A good place to start is Michael Klare, Rising Power, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy, in which he makes clear that we've run out of easy oil, and hence are having to go into impossible places (a mile beneath the Gulf, say) to get at the last stuff that's out there. James Hansen’s, The Storms of My Grandchildren will help readers understand why even if that oil made it ashore and was burned in the gas tank of your car, it would still wreck the planet. And Mike Tidwell's Bayou Farewell will help you understand precisely what we're destroying.

Peter Maass, Author, Crude World: The Violent Twilight of Oil: First, Anthony Sampson's Seven Sisters: The Great Oil Companies and the World They Shaped, originally published in 1975 (a print on demand edition is now available). It's a brilliant indictment of the behavior of the major western oil companies back in the day when they controlled the world's oil; the arrogance and hubris they displayed then is resplendent in BP's behavior today. Second: Elizabeth Kolbert's Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change. It's a superb look into the ways our use of fossil fuels is harming the planet. Explanatory journalism at its finest.

Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post Reporter and Author, Fight Club Politics: How Partisanship is Poisoning the House of Representatives: If you want to understand the BP oil spill, and what’s at stake both in the Gulf of Mexico and in U.S. society as a whole, a few books will provide a good primer on the oil industry, the ongoing battle to dethrone it, and the consequences of failing to do so. Few accounts of the modern oil industry can compete with The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power, by Daniel Yergin.

Yergin is in the process of updating this tome, however, so some readers might want to wait until the reissue is out. The Age of Oil: The Mythology, History and Future of the World’s Most Controversial Resource, by Leonard Maugeri, is an insider’s guide to the global oil industry by a senior executive at Eni, one of the world’s largest publicly-traded oil companies. It offers a contrarian take on the most dire predictions about the future of oil production and a frank assessment of some of the oil trade’s biggest flaws.

For a behind-the-scenes account of the contentious political battle to address global warming, The Climate War: True Believers, Power Brokers, and The Fight to Save the World by Eric Pooley does the trick. While it only makes a brief mention of BP and its CEO Tony Hayward, it serves as a helpful primer to the current climate fight on Capitol Hill. And when all else fails, Jeff Goodell’s How to Cool The Planet: Geoengineering and the Audacious Quest to Fix the Earth’s Climate explains what might happen if American politicians, and the citizens they represent, decide that even a massive accident in the Gulf isn’t enough to make them change the way they power their homes, cars and way of life.

Corry Westbrook, Legislative Director, National Wildlife Federation: I recommend Last Chance: Preserving Life on Earth by Larry J. Schweigner. It’s is about global warming, the causes of global warming, subsequent consequences to our ecosytems and wildlife, and what we need to do to prevent the worst impacts from climate change. The Gulf oil spill is a horrific example of why the United States needs to break its addiction to our carbon based energy economy and this book contains solutions to both problems by suggesting how the US can get on a clean energy path, prevent more climate change, and ensure another devastating oil spill never happens again.

Carl Pope, Chairman of the Sierra Club: Winning the Oil Endgame by Amory Lovins.

Rebecca Bratspies, Environmental Law Professor, CUNY School of Law: To understand what happened in the Gulf, you need an appreciation of how deregulation has hollowed out government and made it impossible for regulators to carry out their charges to protect the public. I suggest The People’s Agents and the Battle to Protect the American Public by Rena Steinzor and Sid Shapiro.

The Condemnation of Blackness
by Khalil Gibran Muhammad

Children are dying in Chicago. The young and old are afraid to walk the streets. Gangs and drugs have overtaken many blocks. Armed young men shoot at police officers and innocent bystanders alike. Mothers and ministers organize antiviolence campaigns....

 

• NRDC executive director Peter Lehner on Marie-Monique Robin's The World According to Monsanto
• Brennan Center chief counsel Fritz Schwarz on Gabriel Schoenfeld's Necessary Secrets: National Security, the Media, and the Rule of Law
• Mark Tushnet on Why the Constitution Matters?
• Interviews with Harvard Medical Anthropologist Paul Farmer and Filibustering Author Gregory Koger
  
• and more!