PositiveThe Wall Street Journal... Kolbert evokes Rachel Carson\'s Silent Spring (1962)...Like Carson, Ms. Kolbert intends to raise an alarm ... The scientists she talks to as she goes about her project are inclined to sweeping claims. While the effect is still alarmist, the book is much less rhetorically overwrought than Carson\'s cri de coeur and provides insights into the ways in which many scientists view the world ... What raises her book far above Silent Spring, especially for those who share neither author\'s ecological fervor, is Ms. Kolbert\'s use of key incidents in the study of natural history to illustrate how accepted scientific knowledge can be radically disrupted. At a time, like our own, of apocalyptic assertions and predictive hubris, it is tonic to be reminded of such paradigm shifts and of the contingent nature of scientific interpretation ... Ms. Kolbert\'s lively account is thought-provoking, whether or not you agree with its premise.
Clayton M Christensen
PositiveThe Wall Street Journal[The authors] are especially insightful about the catalyzing effects of market-creating, behavior-changing and culture-forming innovation on economic development by providing products and services people didn’t know they needed, thereby converting nonconsumers into consumers ... Skeptics will contend that the stony ground of today’s poorest countries is too barren for growth ... Some of the authors’ examples operate with an explicit social purpose, and plenty do not, but profit is what sustains all of them and makes their societal contributions sustainable. What the author describes and advocates is simply capitalism in action ... Instead of a book of glib answers, they present something much more powerful—a work of creative destruction for today’s failed development-policy paradigm.
