Agroecology in China: Science, Practice, and Sustainable Management
Shi Ming Luo and Stephen R. Gliessman
Book
During the past 30 years, industrialization has fundamentally changed traditional rural life and...
Biodiversity and Earth History
Jens Boenigk, Sabina Wodniok and Edvard Glucksman
Book
This uniquely interdisciplinary textbook explores the exciting and complex relationship between...
Energy Sprawl Solutions: Balancing Global Development and Conservation
Davide E. Naugle and Joseph M. Kiesecker
Book
Over the next several decades, as human populations grow and developing countries become more...
Walkaway: A Novel
7.0
Rate It
Book
From New York Times bestselling author Cory Doctorow, an epic tale of revolution, love,...
Science fiction fiction
James Lovelock et al. The Earth and I
Book
“We are buried beneath mountains of fast-accumulating data. In such circumstances, this book,...
Science design
Re-Animator by Everything Everything
Album
The band's approach to 'Re-Animator' was to streamline the creative process by focusing on harmonies...
The Pegan Diet
Book
For decades, the diet wars have pitted advocates for the low-carb, high-fat paleo diet against...
The pandemic of teenage suicides is disturbing, and reflects their despair at the state of the world left for them by previous generations. Parents with money think that they can prevent their childs’ suicide and cure their anxiety throwing money and anti-depressants at the ‘problem’, and sending them to an Anxiety Abatement Centre - and that’s how Simon meets the Prophet and Louise. And that’s where the quest begins.
It turns out that adults are responsible for more than Climate Change. You can add child abuse and big Pharma into the mix as well. And then there’s the political state of the country, where no party is any better than the other, and what’s more, they’re interchangeable. There was a lot of head nodding going on as I read.
And Noah Hawley breaks the 4th wall as he talks directly to the reader, talking about his thought process in writing the novel.
This book is a huge exaggeration of the state of the world, at the same time as it’s not. I hope it doesn’t come to the things that happen in Anthem, but we’ve seen snapshots of it on the news already.
It’s just the right level of crazy, believable, unbelievable, mind-blowing fiction that keeps me well-entertained. I know Noah Hawley is a screen writer, and I can see this as a film - hey, I’d watch it.
Goddess in the Stacks (553 KP) rated American War in Books
Sep 27, 2017
And it’s FANTASTIC.
El Akkad did an absolutely amazing job of weaving together the North/South rivalry of the US, climate change, the changing nature of energy generation, and US wars in the middle east to write an all-too-plausible novel about the US, seventy years from now.
Alternating between narrative chapters following his protagonist, and “historical documents” about the time period, he masterfully tells the story of how a terrorist is made. Because that’s what Sarat, his protagonist, is. Let’s make no bones about that. She is a terrorist. But she is a terrorist whose reasoning makes sense to us. Perhaps because the territories and the peoples are familiar to us, perhaps because we see how she grew up and what drove her to it – but the end result is a terrorist act on an unheard-of scale.
I’d like to think this book would make people look at refugees and terrorists in a new light – with more understanding and compassion and maybe with ideas to help actually combat the attitudes and circumstances that lead to terrorist acts. But I doubt it. I doubt this will change any minds that don’t already understand the underlying reasons.
My only quibble with this book is while he manages to weave together so many other issues facing our country right now, he doesn’t really wrap in racism. And I have a hard time believing our country is past racism 70 years from now.
I was very pleasantly surprised to find the protagonist is a bisexual, gender non-conforming woman of color. How awesome is that? And her bisexuality isn’t mentioned, it’s shown, her one on-screen sex scene (and it’s only barely on-screen) being with a woman. (She’s also attracted to a man in the book.)
The author was born in Egypt, grew up in Qatar, and lived in Canada, earning at least one award for his investigative reporting while working at The Globe and Mail. He’s one of the Canadian Broadcasting Company’s 17 writers to watch this year, and I see why. American War is definitely one of my favorite books of 2017.
You can find all my reviews at http://goddessinthestacks.wordpress.com
Hard Choices: A Memoir
Book
HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON'S INSIDE ACCOUNT OF THE CRISES, CHOICES AND CHALLENGES SHE FACED DURING HER...