Review: Global Weirdness by Climate Central

title:  Global Weirdness: Severe Storms, Deadly Heat Waves, Relentless Drought, 

Rising Seas and the Weather of the Future [purchase here]

author: Climate Central

pages: 214

genre:  nonfiction

published: 2012

source:  New York Public Library

One of my LEAST favorite political arguments to have with "people of alternate political persuasions" is about climate change. Over the years, I've read multiple books and articles by journalists and scientists that all arrive at the same conclusion:  the climate is changing because of choices made by human beings.  Yet some people STILL cling to the notion that this fact is subject to debate (?????), and this BLOWS my mind.  I feel like I've read enough to understand generally what's happening, but not enough to synthesize all the evidence and explain concisely and persuasively what's going on.  Thankfully, Climate Central does EXACTLY that with their new book Global Weirdness.

A few weeks ago, I caught Michael Lemonick on NPR's Fresh Air discussing the book and the goals of Climate Central, which prompted me to put it on my holds list.  Check out the interview here.

Climate Central is a nonpartisan nonprofit collective of scientist and journalists, and they do an excellent job of presenting climate science in a balanced, accurate way.  Global Weirdness is organized ingeniously:  each chapter addresses a specific question or concern about climate science in a researched but accessible, bite-sized way.  The authors are also really careful with how they present the info:  this is what we (as scientists) know, this is what we don't know, here's what we have questions about or are unsure of, here's our best guess and here's how we arrived at that hypothesis.  It was peer reviewed multiple times, and despite the scary subtitle, the version of the future they project, if carbon emissions continue at present levels (or even if they are stopped completely, which, let's face it, isn't likely) sucks, but isn't apocalyptic-sounding (which has been a critique of the green movement in the past).

Some of the best chapters (imho):

Chapter 17:  deals with the effect of the carbon we've already emitted into the atmosphere, and what will happen if (when) we keep emitting more.  They use a great analogy and include a diagram that's super instructive.

Chapter 49:  deals with freshwater and why there's so much talk about our diminishing supply.

Chapters 38 & 44: deals with hurricanes and addresses fears around the severe weather of the future.

One of the other general themes of the book is the difference between climate and weather.  Even some of my more enlightened friends have said in the past: "well, if scientists can't predict what the weather will be like next week, how are they really going to try to tell me what the weather will be like years from now?"  Global Weirdness definitely addresses this, along with so many other facets of science. The facts are alarming, but the tone of the book is not alarmist.

It's a quick read (I finished it on a day full of heavy commuting...4 hours spent on a train!) and is written in language everyone can understand, even if they don't have a background in climate science.  In fact, this would make a great beginning of the year read for any high school science class.

Rubric ruling: 8.5.  Absolutely accomplishes what they set out to accomplish.  And I haven't seen it priced at more than $15 anywhere, which is super for a hardcover, and really lends credibility to their mission (message over profit).

Review: The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family

title:  The Sisters:  The Saga of the Mitford Family [purchase here]

author: Mary S. Lovell

pages: 611

genre:  biography

published:  2001

source:  New York Public Library

"Of course, the whole point of muck-raking, apart from all the jokes, is to try to do something to about what you've been writing about.  You may not be able to change the world but at least you can embarrass the guilty." ~Jessica "Decca" Mitford (p. 481)

The Mitfords are a fascinating family.   

I came to this book via an NPR list of recommended titles, and when I read the blurb, I was intrigued.  A little bit about each of the girls (and Tom):

Nancy Mitford (as photographed by Cecil Beaton!!!): eldest of the seven (!!!) children; author of The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate; friends with Evelyn Waugh (!!!); spent most of her adult life in love with Gaston Palewski, who though he enjoyed her attention, still maintained romantic relationships with many other (sometimes married) women.

Pamela Mitford:  arrived after Nancy; nicknamed "Woman"; probably the least controversial of the bunch; preferred farming to scandal.

Tom Mitford: only boy; died relatively young 

Diana Mitford:  next after Tom; infamous for her first marriage to Bryan Guinness, and then relationship with and later marriage to Sir Oswald Mosely, noted Fascist; spent the better part of World War II in a jail cell for social ties to Hitler

Unity Mitford:  so enamored with Nazi politics, she learned German, moved to Germany, and found a way not only to meet Hitler, but to become his close friend; shot herself (and survived) when Germany and England declared war.

Jessica "Decca" Mitford:  politically very different than Diana and Unity in that she was a Communist for years; eloped to Spain with Esmond Romilly (a Churchill descendant); later moved to the US and, after Esmond's death, married Bob Treuhaft and worked in support of the Communist Party and civil rights; wrote The American Way of Death, an indictment of the funeral industry's exploitative practices.

Deborah "Debo" Mitford: youngest; was growing up in the midst of all the controversy stirred up by her elder sisters; married Andrew Cavendish and became the Duchess of Devonshire and an accomplished businesswoman.

Mary S. Lovell does a wonderful job of trying to avoid redundancy, to not only to consolidate all of the source material on the Mitfords that has accumulated over the years but really present each of the sister's perspective in a non-judgmental way (which is no small task when discussing the polarizing opinions and decisions of Diana and Unity!!!).  I was particularly struck by the delicacy in which she handled Unity's developing relationship with Hitler and Diana's imprisonment during WWII.  She presented the facts, expressed how the family reacted, and let the reader have their own reactions.  

The entire biography was superbly well-researched, yet felt completely accessible considering that I had zero prior knowledge of the Mitford sisters (having been born post 1980).  One thing that makes this bio stand out was the access she had to the remaining Mitford sisters.  Near the end of the biography, Lovell discusses the other biographies written about various members of the Mitford family, each with varying degrees of access to the sisters themselves.  Lovell, because of her access, was able to really speak to how the sisters themselves felt and reacted during different points of the family history,  What I appreciated though was that, for her access, she really tried to present the women as the complex human beings that they were, faults as well as triumphs.  

Rubric rating:  8.  Check out Mitford related postings and pictures here.  Apparently there's a Mitford tumblr.  Who knew??

Further books I'll be checking out:

1.  The American Way of Death Revisited by Jessica Mitford 
2.  Hons and Rebels by Jessica Mitford
3.  Nancy Mitford by Harold Acton
4.  The Pursuit of Love & Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford
5.  Wait for Me!  by Deborah Mitford, Duchess of Devonshire

Update:  I've now finished 5 of the 30 titles (25 to go!) on my 30-before-30 literary bucket list, with two more in progress.

Classics:  
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald **
Franny and Zooey by JD Salinger **
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy **
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh
Pale Fire by Vladmir Nabokov


Contemporary:  
Arcadia by Lauren Groff  (in progress)
Celebrity Chekhov by Ben Greenman
Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids by Kenzaburo Oe
Blindness by Jose Saramago **
The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruiki Murakami
Absurdistan by Gary Shteyngart 
Eat the Document by Dana Spiotta
The Pale King by David Foster Wallace
Men in the Off Hours by Anne Carson
Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson **   (in progress) 
The Descent of Alette by Alice Notely **
Atlas of Remote Islands by Judith Schalansky
The Leopard by Giuseppe Di Lampedusa
The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis
Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal
The Old Child and Other Stories by Jenny Erpenbeck (review coming soon!!!!!!!)

Spirit Seizures by Melissa Pritchard

Nonfiction/Essays: 
The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family by Mary S. Lovell 
Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer

The Possessed by Elif Batuman
Zona by Geoff Dyer
Hons and Rebels by Jessica Mitford


** rereading

EVERYBODY loves LISTS: Earth Day Reads

Happy Earth Day!  Here are a few of my favorite environmentally-conscious reads from my personal library:

title:  The World Without Us

by:  Alan Weisman

About the book:  [from the Strand website]:

In this exacting account of the processes by which things fall apart, Alan Weisman writes about which objects from today would vanish without us: how our pipes, wires, and cables would be pulverized into an unusual (but mere) line of red rock; why some museums and churches might be the last human creations standing; how rats and roaches would struggle without us, and how plastic, cast-iron, and radio waves may be our most lasting gifts to the planet. The book is also about how parts of the world already fare without a human presence: Chernobyl; a Polish old-growth forest; the Korean DMZ. And, it looks at the human legacy on Earth, both fleeting and indelible. 320p.

title: Field Notes from a Catastrophe:  Man, Nature and Climate Change

by:  Elizabeth Kolbert

About the book: [from the Strand website]

Long known for her insightful and thought-provoking political journalism, author Elizabeth Kolbert now tackles the controversial and increasingly urgent subject of global warning. in what begins as a groundbreaking three-part series in the New Yorker, Kolbert cuts through the competing rhetoric, and political agendas to elucidate 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 foreword. 225p.

title: A Primate's Memoir: A Neuroscientist's Unconventional Life Among the Baboons

author: Robert M. Sapolsky

About the book: [from the Strand website]:

The author of 'Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers' sets out to study the relationship between stress and disease. But he soon learns that life in the African bush bears little resemblance to the tranquility of a museum diorama. The book is the culmination of more than two decades of experience and research. 304p.

title: Out of Eden: An Odyssey of Ecological Invasion

author: Alan Burdick

About the book: [from the Strand website]:

Alan Burdick tours the front lines of ecological invasion in the company of world-class scientists in Hawaii, Tasmania, Guam, San Francisco; in lush rain forests, aboard an Alaska-bound oil tanker, inside a spacecraft-assembly facility at NASA. Wry and reflective, animated and provocative, OUT OF EDEN is a search both for scientific answers and for ecological authenticity.340p.

Review: Life Laid Bare: The Survivors in Rwanda Speak

title: Life Laid Bare: The Survivors in Rwanda Speak

author: Jean Hatzfeld

genre: nonfiction

pages: 244

source: New York Public Library

"I think, moreover, that no one will ever line up the truths of this mysterious tragedy and write them down--not the professors in Kigali and Europe, not the groups of intellectuals and politicians.  Every explanation will give way on one side or another, like a wobbly table.  A genocide is a poisonous bush that grows not from two or three roots, but from a whole tangle that has moldered underground without anyone noticing." ~Claudine Kayitesi, page 206

Journalist Jean Hatzfeld made several journeys to Bugesera in the late 1990s to interview the men, women and children who survived the Rwandan genocide, where 5 out of 6 Tutsis were brutally massacred by their Hutu neighbors over the period of several weeks.  This book is a collection of those interviews where the survivors, in their own words, describe life before, during and since the genocide.  Each survivor's story is preceded by Hatzfeld's delicate and vivid impressions of Bugesera's community.  

What struck me most was the bravery, openness and honesty with which each survivor spoke, as each relayed their own history bare and tried to make sense of it.   Some powerful quotes:

"In my memory, the genocide was yesterday, or rather, last year, and it will always be just last year, because I can detect no change that will allow time to return to its proper place."  ~Edith Uwanyiligira, page 173.

"We wrapped our fears in the leaves of silence."~Berthe Mwanankabandi, page 183

"The genocide pushes into isolation those it could not push into death."  ~Berthe Mwanankabandi, page 188

"We were forgotten by time, which must have continued to pass for others--Hutus, foreigners, animals--but no longer wished to pass for us."~Claudine Kayitesi, page 200

"A genocide is a film projected every day before the eyes of the survivors, and there's no point in interrupting it before the end." ~Sylvie Umubyeyi, page 222

"I feel that fear is eating away at the time luck has saved for us...[b]ecause if you linger too long with the fear of genocide, you lose hope.  You lose what you have managed to salvage from life.  You risk contamination from a different madness." ~Sylvie Umubyeyi, page 234

This collection is what I had hoped for when reading Burmese Refugees: Letters from the Thai-Burma Border.  Hatzfeld does an incredible job creating the platform from which the survivors teach us about the best and worst of humanity.  Powerful, moving and carefully wrought.  

Just a word of advice:  I chose this book as my subway read because it was compact...not a good call. I found myself frequently tearing up as I read each gripping account of survival.   I'm not big on crying in public...little awkward for my fellow commuters!!  Sorry about that!!

Rubric rating: 8.  I'm looking forward to reading the companion piece Machete Season: The Killers in Rwanda Speak.

Rapid Fire Reviews!!!!!

title:  In Red

author: Magdalena Tulli

pages: 158

genre: literary fiction

published: November 2011

source:  New York Public Library

Translated from Polish by Bill Johnson, the main character in Tulli's In Red is the fictional town of Stitchings.  Part portrait, part magical realism, Tulli creates a town from which there may be no escape, chronicling the life and death of an ensemble of the town's figureheads.  Chaotic, claustrophobic, and intensely lyrical, Tulli's strength lies in her insane command of language to create the mood and atmosphere of the piece.  

Rubric rating: 7

title:  There But For The

author: Ali Smith

pages: 236

genre: literary fiction

published: September 2011

source:  New York Public Library

One evening, Miles Garth attends a dinner party at the home of Genevieve Lee, and between the main course and dessert, leaves the table, walks upstairs and locks himself in the Lee's spare bedroom.  And refuses to leave.  For about a year.

Smith tells the story from the perspective of four individuals with varying relationships with Miles, and through each, the reader is able to assemble a portrait of the man that is Miles Garth, and Smith's strength lies in her ability to at once create these personal pictures of each character while at the same time examining the themes of separation and connection.  

Rubric rating: 7

title:  The Psychopath Test

author: Jon Ronson

pages: 288

genre: nonfiction-psychology

published:  2011

source:  New York Public Library

Note to the single ladies:  I happened to have this book with me one Friday night as I waited to meet a friend at a bar, and three different men approached me to flirt/ask about the book.  Apparently, this book is a man magnet.  Unanticipated bonus ;)

While investigating the origins of mysterious packages sent to neurologists around the world, Ronson becomes fascinated with the DSM-V and the characteristics of psychopaths.  He wonders:  could some of the most successful and powerful individuals be, in essence, psychopaths?

I really enjoy Ronson's narrative style.  I felt like I was with him in his head as he discovered new information and revised his thinking, which is something readers don't usually get to experience in nonfiction.  Hilarious, thought-provoking, disturbing and insightful, The Psychopath Test is not to be missed!

Rubric rating: 8

Review: Burmese Refugees, Letters from the Thai-Burma Border

title: Burmese Refugees, Letters from the Thai-Burma Border [purchase here]

essays collected by: T F Rhoden & T L S Rhoden

pages: 110

genre:  collection of nonfiction personal essays

source:  I received an epub copy from the author in exchange for an honest review.

When I received this ebook in my inbox last week, I did something I never do:  I paused my reading of a Jonathan Franzen novel.  For those who know me well, my love for Franzen is not far behind my love for the late David Foster Wallace, and said love and absolute admiration runs deep.  I was that excited for this piece.


According to T F Rhoden, this collection of personal essays started as an assignment where the refugee students in his English enhancement class were asked to write three paragraphs about their past.  He was moved by what his class produced and felt compelled to do more to understand their experiences.  What the Rhoden brothers propose to do with this collection is, by bringing to light the conditions (both past and present) faced by the Burmese refugees waiting for resettlement, rally others to their cause and affect positive change on their behalf.  I can absolutely get behind that.


In terms of content, the stories from the refugees themselves are incredibly moving and inspiring on several levels.  I used to teach ESL students myself, and have experienced how challenging writing honestly and accurately can be in a language that's not your first.   Kudos to the essayists for bravely taking on that challenge.  I would venture to guess that if I attempted the same assignment in, say, French, the result would not be nearly as successful.  Though their narratives can be at times choppy and awkward, what shines through in many is remarkable: the will not just to stay alive, but to live life fully. A theme that repeated itself in several of the essays was the desire of the authors to eventually, after resettlement, return to Burma and/or to affect change for the people in their community from abroad.  The passionate, determined voices of the refugees are absolutely the book's strength.  Reading their accounts, I was seething thinking about all of the injustices, major and minor, the authors had been subjected to living under an oppressive military junta.  And if you can get past my criticism below, the book is worth picking up just to read their stories.


Unfortunately, there's a lot to sift through to get to these potent firsthand accounts. In fact, I only got through about half of the book before I got so fed up with T F Rhoden I had to stop reading.  In the interest of brevity,  here are my two biggest problems with the text:


1)  Basic spelling, grammar, usage and structural errors:  the text is positively rife with them.  T F Rhoden's introduction alone is abominable.  In affecting a "writerly" voice, he constructs some of the most awkward, roundabout sentences I've ever read.  T F Rhoden seems to have no clue who is audience is, and though he apes a scholarly tone at times, this book is clearly not research-based enough for academia.  In fact, I can't imagine the brothers hired a fact checker if they clearly didn't bother to hire a copy editor, or even pass the manuscript off to a friend to proof read for that matter.  In addition, content wise, there are multiple superfluous details throughout the introduction that any editor worth their salt would have cut in favor of flow.  T L S Rhoden fares far better in his introduction, which is much more concise and clear, though he confuses "affect" and "effect."  All in all, these sloppy, easily correctable mistakes are incredibly disruptive to the reader and ultimately distract attention from the important part of the book:  the Burmese people and their stories.


2) T F Rhoden's ego: I felt two kinds of anger as I read.  The first was on behalf of the many essayists for the oppression they faced.  The other was directed toward T F Rhoden, who inserts himself into this text far too much.  At the end of each essay, T F Rhoden adds several paragraphs of what he views as exposition, which he claims are there to help provide context.  And the fact-based parts of said paragraphs are, actually, very helpful.  Unfortunately, Rhoden then proceeds to give us his characterization of many of the essayists and comes off as incredibly condescending.  For example, one of the essays was penned by a math teacher who described her background and role in the 8/8/88 protests.  When sharing his impression of her, T F Rhoden writes:


"She reminded me, if anything, of just your normal modern woman; or, I suppose, that is what she would be if she had grown up in a prosperous civil society."


What lies underneath statements such as these (and there are many), the implication that because the essayist didn't have a Western upbringing she can't be considered modern, is downright insulting.  T F Rhoden is so entrenched in (and potentially unconscious of) his white male Western worldview that many of his musings on his former students smack of condescension stemming from an inherently imperialist mindset.   The essayist was a woman who graduated high school with distinctions, held a BS in mathematics, a MS, and started her own tutoring company.  Yet T F Rhoden was pleasantly surprised to find her "modern" and "normal." His statement implies that her cultural difference makes her backward and somehow less than, and through his backhanded praise, are we then supposed to laud him for seeing her in such a favorable, benevolent light?


As T F Rhoden spent time in the Peace Corps, I was a corps member with Teach For America, and have worked in low income communities throughout NYC for the past 6 years.  One of the things Teach For America at least tries to do is, through continuous coursework, start a discussion around white privilege, issues of cultural bias, kind-hearted prejudice, inherent and unconscious Western mindsets, etc and we spend a lot of time thinking about how our views of race, culture and class, etc were shaped, how they shape us, and how they might impact how we affect change in our classrooms.  I'm not by any means stating we all walk out of these courses freed of all of our failings, but at least questions have been asked and a dialogue has been started and many corps members are thinking about race, culture and privilege in ways they might not have before.  I can't imagine that the Peace Corps doesn't have similar coursework or readings to prepare its volunteers to enter diverse communities across the globe.  What boggles my mind is how out of touch T F Rhoden's comments (such as the one I quoted) are, and how they reek of an assumed inherent superiority.  The impression I was left with of T F Rhoden is that what he really wants out of this book, whether consciously or not, is for the reader to see him as a benevolent, altruistic presence...and what comes across loud and clear is that he values been seen this way far more than he values the people whose cause he's purportedly attempting to advance.


I would love to be proved wrong in my assumptions about T F Rhoden. My advice (as a writer, an educator, and someone who works at a multicultural publisher specifically with social justice themed books everyday): If Rhoden really wants this book to serve as a platform for the Burmese refugees, he needs to take himself out of it.  He needs to come to terms with the fact that the book isn't about him.  If he wants to write a memoir about his experiences and impressions of the people he met, that's a different book.  If he really is aiming to act as a loudspeaker for the voices of those he met, he needs to


1) hire a GOOD copy editor


2) hire a fact checker or a research intern, do some additional research, re-interview the essayists if necessary, and cite all sources; tons of statistics are quoted with absolutely no back matter/footnotes/etc to support any of it beyond his own experience.


3) think more like a journalist than a diarist, and revise the expository paragraphs at the end of each essay to be just that: expository as opposed to editorial. Include facts that answer the following types of questions only:  Where is the essayist now?  What/how are they doing?  What other challenges/obstacles did they face that they didn't include in their essay?   Objective observation is fine.  Subjective assumption is not; that's the stuff of memoir.  There are examples of paragraphs where he does just this and they work.  As the reader, I don't want the editor to opine on what types of people he gather the essayists to be (regardless of whether I find those opinions offensive or not).  I want to hear it from the writers.


Rubric rating:  2.  Reads like a first draft of a manuscript and not as a published piece, and absolutely does not do justice to the voices of those it alleges to advocate for.