A fascinating, informative, eccentric look at the future of farming and food.
An energetic activist asks difficult questions about food production and finds some interesting answers.
Monbiot, a Guardian columnist and founder of Rewilding Britain, covers many topics, but one of his primary subjects is soil. His interest started in his own backyard when he wondered why some plants failed while others thrived. This led him to study what was happening under the surface, where he found a teeming tangle of bacteria, subterranean plants, and tiny creatures. It’s a jungle down there, although the various armies usually find a balance. The problem is that the equilibrium has been upset by modern farming practices, which drain nutrients from the soil and eventually reduce yields and variety. While Monbiot has plenty of harsh words for industrial-level agribusiness, he is equally skeptical of organic farming and its militant advocates. This type of agriculture is impossible to operate on a large scale, he notes, and often generates its own environmental costs. Neither does the author have time for activists who want to make food more expensive, arguing that it will make people eat less. Such an approach might be acceptable for wealthy people but would be very hard on those who are already struggling. “Just as it’s impossible to feed the world on pasture-fed meat, it’s impossible to feed the world on low-yield agroecology,” Monbiot argues. “In every farming system, we should seek two properties: high yields and low impacts.” Within this framework, he sees a range of paths forward, and he chronicles the work of several farms that are making progress at revitalizing soils while improving yields. There is also promise in new types of crops, including perennial species. Monbiot is also interested in creating food in labs using precise fermentation methods. This method is in use, but there is untapped potential in the area. These are interesting possibilities, and Monbiot is willing to follow the research to useful solutions.
A fascinating, informative, eccentric look at the future of farming and food.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-14-313596-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: April 8, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
A top-notch political memoir and serious exercise in practical politics for every reader.
In the first volume of his presidential memoir, Obama recounts the hard path to the White House.
In this long, often surprisingly candid narrative, Obama depicts a callow youth spent playing basketball and “getting loaded,” his early reading of difficult authors serving as a way to impress coed classmates. (“As a strategy for picking up girls, my pseudo-intellectualism proved mostly worthless,” he admits.) Yet seriousness did come to him in time and, with it, the conviction that America could live up to its stated aspirations. His early political role as an Illinois state senator, itself an unlikely victory, was not big enough to contain Obama’s early ambition, nor was his term as U.S. Senator. Only the presidency would do, a path he painstakingly carved out, vote by vote and speech by careful speech. As he writes, “By nature I’m a deliberate speaker, which, by the standards of presidential candidates, helped keep my gaffe quotient relatively low.” The author speaks freely about the many obstacles of the race—not just the question of race and racism itself, but also the rise, with “potent disruptor” Sarah Palin, of a know-nothingism that would manifest itself in an obdurate, ideologically driven Republican legislature. Not to mention the meddlings of Donald Trump, who turns up in this volume for his idiotic “birther” campaign while simultaneously fishing for a contract to build “a beautiful ballroom” on the White House lawn. A born moderate, Obama allows that he might not have been ideological enough in the face of Mitch McConnell, whose primary concern was then “clawing [his] way back to power.” Indeed, one of the most compelling aspects of the book, as smoothly written as his previous books, is Obama’s cleareyed scene-setting for how the political landscape would become so fractured—surely a topic he’ll expand on in the next volume.
A top-notch political memoir and serious exercise in practical politics for every reader.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6316-9
Page Count: 768
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2020
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