RaveThe New York Times Book ReviewParadigm-destroying ... Grand, eclectic, wide-ranging ... Odell’s undertaking is massive and ambitious ... Sometimes, in her race to gather all of this information together, Odell elides narrative inconveniences or leaves things unexplained ... But singling out any specific moment in this book feels like a betrayal of the whole. The narrative logic is purposefully meandering and elliptical ... She doesn’t provide answers or policies for how; that’s not her project. But she has opened up a space between the present and the future in which it might be possible.
Andreas Malm
PositiveThe New York Times[Malm] advocates powerfully against despair and powerlessness. One of the most satisfying parts of his book comes when he brutally dispatches with \'climate fatalists\' like Jonathan Franzen, who argue that we should all just give up ... So Malm wants us to fight back (though I should add that there aren’t any actual instructions here about how to blow anything up) ... Sure. But the problem with violence, even if it’s meant only to destroy \'fossil capital,\' is that ultimately it’s impossible to control.
David Pogue
MixedThe New York Times Book ReviewMuch of the book, especially the sections on what to look for in an insurance policy, is helpful. It also includes an explanation of climate science and the obligatory feel-good sections on hope: actions some are taking and how you can participate ... It wouldn’t be wrong to do as he suggests; climate change will make these disasters worse and more frequent. Still, there’s something unsettling about the project, especially since many can’t act as advised, for financial or other reasons, and the real problem is that governments and corporations are failing us ... it’s not necessarily wrong to lay out the climate risks of living in some places and the benefits of others. But, who is this advice for? Not everyone can move to Boulder, Colo., to take advantage of its hiking trails and ambitious climate targets ... No book can do everything, but planning for our collective future should be about everyone, including those without the means to prepare, since they are in the most danger. Inequality is a large part of what got us here; preparing for climate change shouldn’t make that worse.
Alexis Coe
PositiveThe New York Times Book Review... an important achievement. [Coe] has cleverly disguised a historiographical intervention in the form of a sometimes cheeky presidential biography...she demonstrates that just because more conventional presidential biographies sometimes approach the length of the Bible , that doesn’t mean they are an infallible or unfiltered record of events. History, this book argues, is always an interpretation of the past and an argument about what it means ... readers keen to hear about Washington’s military heroics, for instance, will be disappointed. I was relieved to be spared play-by-plays of Revolutionary War battles, and much preferred to hear about Washington the spymaster and propagandist. But the particulars of war deserve more careful consideration than Coe gives them: I had to listen to her description of how Washington allegedly started the French and Indian War several times, and I’m still confused ... Also puzzling is the lack of detail surrounding Washington’s time as a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses and the First Continental Congress. If he didn’t leave a lot of writing behind about it, that would have been good to know. As it is, the impression is that he had no thoughts at all about politics until he became president.
Dana Thomas
MixedThe New York Times Book Review... Thomas convincingly connects our fast-fashion wardrobes to global economic and climate patterns and crises ... includes a fascinating account of how NAFTA made possible the international success of fast fashion ... Not all of the book is this pessimistic: There is plenty of bubbliness and glamour for fashion lovers to get excited about. Thomas displays her skills as a culture and style reporter as she visits the visionaries who are attempting to remake the industry ... Among the book’s delights are Thomas’s sketches of her individual subjects ... The author also has a gift for bringing luxury to life: She conjures Moda Operandi’s London showroom so vividly that I felt as though I’d moved in ... However, it is in contextualizing this single industry from a broader climate perspective that the book falls short. Some statistics are exaggerated ... the practical considerations — cost, efficiency, resource limitations — are often left unaddressed ... it is not the goal of Fashionopolis to provide all the answers. Thomas has succeeded in calling attention to the major problems in the $2.4-trillion-a-year industry, in a way that will engage not only the fashion set but also those interested in economics, human rights and climate policy.
