Taking a cue from "encounters," Asimov categorizes catastrophes leading to the destruction of human life into five classes. "First class" catastrophes are changes affecting the universe, inimical to life anywhere. Class two are events threatening our solar system; Class three, those threatening the earth itself; Class four, those that would destroy the human race; and Class five, those that would wipe out civilization, leaving a few survivors to lead "nasty, brutish, short-lived existences." Such an embarrassment of poornesses allows the massive Asimovian index file to adduce theory, evidence, and probabilities for disasters ranging from black-hole approaches to Andromeda strains. A Class one catastrophe could occur, for example, because the universe is running down, according to the second law of thermodynamics, leading to ultimate "heat-death." Earlier, however, catastrophes could occur either by the universe expanding indefinitely (the open universe theory) or by gravitational collapse to the cosmic egg (closed or oscillating universe theory). At the other end of the spectrum, Class five annihilation of civilization could come about through the well-known routes of overpopulation, pollution, limited resources, or war. But Asimov is no Cassandra. In the first three classes, indeed, the highest probabilities are given to a collapsing universe (which would take billions of years); to the sun's evolving to a blazing red giant (seven billion years remaining); to the earth's suffering a new ice age or, alternatively, a melting and flooding (in several thousand years)—lots of time to Do Something About It. What must be dealt with now is the threat of thermonuclear war, a Class four catastrophe, and the multiple Class five problems. Here, again, Asimov trusts in science and technology. As ever, this is clearcut exposition, leading the reader expertly down paths of entropy or recombinant DNA; only the optimism seems strained, with too much belief in sweet reason, and insufficient evidence as to how it might prevail.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0449900487
Page Count: -
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1979
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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