Book Reviews

Book review: What do do about economic growth

A review of Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo, Good Economics for Hard Times (New York:  Pubic Affairs, 2019).  402 PP. No illus. Or maps.      The day I purchased Good Economics for Hard Times, I picked up the Wall Street Journal and read this front-page headline:  “Jobs Cap Decade of Steady Gains” (Jan. 11-12, 2020).       Steady jobs gains are not signs of “hard times.”  So does the fact that we now live in what may reasonably be thought of as easy times mean this book… Read More »Book review: What do do about economic growth

Book review: Falter

Review of Bill McKibben, Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? (New York: Henry Holt, 2019), 291 pp., no illus. or maps. Bill McKibben forges into new territory in this book, bringing together the threat of climate change with fears of Artificial Intelligence and of gene modification. His conclusion is that the three developments are causing mankind to “falter,” that is, to come near to extinction. He stops short of proclaiming the end of the human race, but it is faltering, tilting,… Read More »Book review: Falter

Book Review: Carbon Capture, Howard Herzog

A review of Howard J. Herzog, Carbon Capture (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2018), 198 pp. Some solutions to climate change roam the earth looking for someone to champion them. Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) has few friends. Liberals think it is a figleaf over continued use of fossil fuels. CCS, they say, allows business as usual under the vague technological promise that CCS will someday remove what we are carelessly putting into the atmosphere now. On the other hand, conservatives seem to regard CCS as another… Read More »Book Review: Carbon Capture, Howard Herzog

Book Review: Behind the Curve

Here is the latest in Mark Neely’s series of reviews of books on climate change. Review of Joshua P. Howe, Behind the Curve: Science and the Politics of Global Warming (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2014)This review has benefited from discussion with Carl Evensen, Milton Cole, and Sylvia Neely. Historian Joshua P. Howe offers readers an able narrative of the development of climate change issues in American politics and government from the Cold War to 2014, by which time, he argues, the issue had moved… Read More »Book Review: Behind the Curve