Book Description
Standing at the podium, Victor Villaseñor looked at the group of educators amassed before him, and his mind flooded with childhood memories of humiliation and abuse at the hands of his teachers. He became enraged. With a pounding heart, he began to speak of these incidents. When he was through, to his great disbelief he received a standing ovation. Many in the audience could not contain their own tears.
So begins the passionate, touching memoir of Victor Villaseñor. Highly gifted and imaginative as a child, Villaseñor coped with an untreated learning disability (he was finally diagnosed, at the age of forty-four, with extreme dyslexia) and the frustration of growing up Latino in an English-only American school in the 1940s. Despite teachers who beat him because he could not speak English, Villaseñor clung to his dream of one day becoming a writer. He is now considered one of the premier writers of our time.
Customer Reviews:
Disappointing..........2007-05-26
I was under the impression that this book would focus on the author's triumphs over adversity (i.e. dyslexia, racism, etc.). Although the book did touch on the aforementioned themes to a certain degree, I felt that its central focus was steeped in some of the most prosaic, banal details of Villasenor's childhood. The author's writing has a way of making the most tragic experiences of Villasenor's life seem incidental. The majority of children have stories about growing up but I am not sure that they are all noteworthy enough to be chronicled in a memoir. Likewise, I think that Villasenora could have broadened his work's appeal if he would have omitted several lackluster childhood experiences. I started the book with an open mind and with each page I hoped that it would get better. Regrettably, the book did not meet my expectations.
I recommend this book to everyone..........2007-05-13
I've read "Rain of Gold"(which I also recommend) and found "Burro Genius" to be just as wonderful. I recommend this book to everyone. Especially anyone of Mexican/American descent. If you've never read a book of Victor's, now's the time!
¡Excelente!.......2007-04-12
Excellency is the only word that describes this amazing tale! It is not Victor's fantasy but Victor's life in light of his dreams and struggles to be who he is. The Villaseñor's story is still the story of many inmmigrants, from many countries and many races. It is a redemptive experience that helps us to to keep on with life, no matter how hard it might be or turn. In a world where everything is "made" and taken for granted, Victor's creativity and desire to suceed over its limitations, emerges as a clear example for those who want to give up. It is simply remarkable! It is possible!
Outstanding Book and great storytelling........2007-04-12
Victor's storytelling magic lies in his very natural ability to make you feel as if you are 'right there' as an observor or silent participant in the experiences and adventures he is describing. His stories are treasures because they take his Latino readers back to their own lives in this country AND they offer non-Latino readers a golden opportunity to experience life as seen through the eyes of an immigrant. This particular book, BURRO GENIUS, is just such a story. The key to understanding and feeling what Victor writes about is to try and 'check your cultural baggage at the door' and experience the stories with a clean canvas.
No apparent English version........2007-03-16
I ordered this book thinking that it was written in English as are many of Villasenor's books. I received this book and realized that it was totally in Spanish. There was no indication from your review that it was in Spanish, therefore it was a total surprise. When I returned the book, I asked, in writing, for the English version, but did not receive anything more than a refund.
Book Description
As poignant as Niall Fregusson's The Pity of War, as powerful as John Keegan's The First World War, this is an engrossing eye-witness history of World War I. From the trenches to the battle lines, in bold advances and fighting retreats and courageous stands, this oral chronicle of World War I by award-winning historian Lyn Macdonald brings to life the massive German offensive of Spring 1918 that became the Second Battle of Somme. As moving as it is monumental, the volume recounts the devastating assault in the words of the men who survived it-from the commanders to the war-weary British Tommies, the eager German foot soldiers, and the as-yet-untested doughboys fresh from the U.S. Unforgettably, To the Last Man puts a human face on the armies in the field as it gives voice to the soldiers who together held their position against the foe-resisting, as the Allied command had ordered, "to the last round and the last man." "Through the thoughtful, sensitive marshaling of information from letters and interviews, Macdonald has not only conjured up the horrific sights and sounds of the First World War but has captured the heartfelt feelings of the participants as well." - Houston Chronicle
Customer Reviews:
Timeless.......2005-12-02
The first person accounts and the poignant memories of those who served in 1918 ring from these pages. It is easy to forget that this conflict took place almost a century ago and the long view through the Cold War and World War II sometimes make the first world war seem almost irrelevent. However, this book brings home the reality of the modern nature of this war, the rifles, the machineguns, the artillery, aircraft and through it all, the timeless, brave faces of the soldiers on the front line.
Ms. MacDonald's book does a service to the veterans of the First World War as it puts a face and a human perspective on the horrendous experience of trench warfare. Although the spring of 1918 was more fluid and mobile than many other periods of the war, it still came down to men marching against other men dug into trenches. Positions and yards of front taken in a frightful cost of men's lives.
This book has a timeless feel to it and the letters and interviews may gloss over some of the horrors which I think is partially the spirit of the generation and partially the difficulty of dwelling or reporting the horrors to others who were not there, but they do resound with the action, the confusion, the fear and the suffering that is commonplace in all war.
This is a great text to read in that it does capture the human aspect of the fight and does not get too deep into units and army group movement. The big picture is laid out as a backdrop that the author then sets the individual soldier's stories against. A tremendous read and phenomenal book.
Dead Men Tell no Tales - The Eloquence of Survival.......2004-04-28
Lyn MacDonald's growing collection of books about World War I are unique in many respects and all are well worth a read - for both the student of the war and for readers only casually interested in the period.
From the point of view of a military historian, the war in 1918 was itself unique with its return to mobile warfare that had otherwise only existed at the outset of the war, with the arrival of U.S. forces on the fronts, and with the incorporation of new weapons technologies and tactical approaches on the battlefield. It was also unique as the year in which many felt the war might be won by the Germans but in which, ultimately, the conflict ended with German defeat.
MacDonald's view is not that of a military historian, her book captures few of these elements. But it nevertheless casts a powerfully refracted light on the nature of the war in 1918 by the approach she takes. Hers is a "ground-level" view, seen through the many eyes of the soldiers who fought through that chaotic springtime of war.
As in many of her previous titles, MacDonald builds her history upon the actual words of combatants. These are the voices of the soldiers who fought. The book is more than an anthology of narratives, though. MacDonald does an excellent job of weaving the individual views into a well-told story. Although big-picture views are rare, she does a nice job of depicting individual experiences and local battles from many different points of view. It is rare to find the military history "microscope" focused at this particular scale.
Unlike prior books of hers that I have read, "...1918" is not limited to the perspectives of the British combatants. MacDonald has made a clear effort to incorporate the archived words of German soldiers by way of a small collection of such documents which were provided to her in translation. Nevertheless, her anglophile leanings are still quite evident and detract from the sense that the book is a balanced view. U.S., French and German soldiers are only a small part of this story.
Interestingly I found that this book offers much more of one element that you might expect the military historians to excel at - maps! There are more maps-per-page in this book than the best of John Keegan. Local details, right down to the farmhouses and roadways, abound, and add to your appreciation of the battle situations described by the combatants.
In addition to the small critique above that the book is Brit-focused, I have to note one other element of bias that might seem almost tautological in a book like this: most of the stories are those of survivors.
Just as history written by the victors is often skewed history, war as viewed by the survivors seems inevitably tempered by the reality of having "gotten through it." MacDonald does sprinkle her story with contemporaneous writings of soldiers who did survive (and some who did not), but many of the accounts are from a retrospective viewpoint that is clearly colored by time. Just as rich men often only recall their own hard work, and pontificate about generic success deriving from hard work alone, survivors of warfare can, in the process of healing physical and emotional scars, of going on with life, gloss over their own or their buddies' weaker moments.
There is also an inevitable "selection" factor that an approach like MacDonald's can't overcome. Those who came back from the war unwilling or unable to talk about what they experienced cannot contribute their silence to a book like this. In his book "Back to the Front", Stephen O'Shea can only indirectly discover the experience of his own stubbornly silent grandfathers, and his developing sense of the horror of that experience contrasts sharply with the overall tone of MacDonald's work.
If one can adapt to these limitations of approach, "To The Last Man: Spring 1918" is a fine book, excellently written and illustrated, which brings to life the desperate final months of the war that gave birth to the modern era and so many of the geopolitical ills of this new millennium.
To The Last Man is good to the last page.......2003-09-25
Springtime in a Europe ravaged by war. On the Western Front the German army launches a massive offensive in the Amiens region of Northern France against the British Army. Lynn MacDonald continues in this tome her oral history of the Great War.
The eyewitness accounts of German, French and German participants in the horrific hell of Spring 1918 make this book a valuable addition to the history of the war. MacDonald has done a beautiful job of reporting on the hellacious sights, smells and utter Dantesque horror of trench warfare. This book would be an excellent addition to anyone's library who is interested in World War I from the perspective of both the common soldier and the generals at GHQ.
This is my first exposure to Macdonald and she has whetted my interest to read more of her work.
Americans are not as familiar with the great battles of World War I as they should be. Macdonald is a good start to begin. After reading the last paragraph I concur with William Sherman who opined that "War is Hell."
As the tragedy of war is unfolded on the pages of this book the reader is drawn into the vortex of the horror that is modern warfare.
Lynn Macdonald is a superb researcher, writer and historian. I recommend this book very highly.
PS-The maps are well drawn and helpful!
To the Last Man: Spring 1918 - Lyn MacDonald.......2001-01-17
The book had a rather slow and indirect beginning. It didn't really grab me until perhaps toward the end of the first chapter. By then, the author provides more poignant first hand accounts of the German offensive of Spring 1918. Not all of the material before this point seems relevant.
This is admittedly an account from the British perspective with some added interviews and journal entries from German soldiers. An occasional account from the French, Australian or even American perspective is added for good measure. The detailed descriptions of the battle are fleshed out well by the abundant soldier's accounts. I'm sure more use of non-British sources would have created a broader picture of the campaign. However, the book works well within its limits. It is not highly analytical. Instead, it recounts the fortnight's events from the soldier's view. Lyn Macdonald adds clear details of troop movements and maneuvers.
To the common man's perspective, she adds some history of the politics of statesmen and generals. The most unfortunate player in this field is General Gough who, because of Lloyd George, took the fall for the Allies shortcomings. By Ludendorff's admission, his strategy was sound and helped to slow the German advance. Good show for making this point.
The book ends rather abruptly, turning on a brief discussion of the treatment of wounded prisoners. Only a little analysis is offered in the short concluding remarks. The heart of this book is good, but I think as a whole, it could have been better. This piece works best as a supplement to other, more weighty works.
Very Engrossing Book.......2000-05-22
This book retells it like it was for the men in the trenches back in 1918. The firsthand accounts provide the common soldier's view not commonly found in most history books. Many memorable moments like the counter-attack made by the London-Scottish, and a Colonel Lowry's escape from the Germans during a rainy night. It is a very readable book and shows the futility of the tactics of the time. One of the best history books I've ever purchased.
Customer Reviews:
I was reading this on Pearl Harbour Day and..........2004-12-11
I happened to be reading this on the anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attacks; on the same day my local paper carried a Mallard Fillmore strip which tried to mock the liberal media by having a stereotypical liberal media commentator intoning, "Today the Japanese Attacked Pearl Harbor. Let's examine how we brought this on ourselves." Amongst many other topics, Chomsky actually does show how we brought Pearl Harbor on ourselves. The "Pacific War" as he calls it was not just an unprovoked act of aggression. The Japanese imperialists, even though (as Chomsky points out) they were every bit as brutal as their white rivals, had an arguably legitimate political goal: that is, they wanted Asia to be ruled by Asians rather than by Europeans.
As others have noted, this is a pwerful, angry and wide-ranging book. As you can see just from the title: "Year 501" refers to the 501st anniversary of Columbus's first voyage, but Chomsky's story ranges all over the globe abd all over history.
If you're like me, you know Chomsky's political works primarily from his extensive collaborations with David Barsamian, which are based on speeches and radio interviews. Chomsky voice is much more fiery when, as he is here, he speaks without Barsamian as a moderator.
!288 pages of heaviness but READ!.......2004-08-02
Dense like lead is dense next to tin, Chomsky's serial revelations of atrocious U.S.A. histories will leave you burdened to suspend belief. If you can read and you are a citizen you will contend with your complicity of the 'us' in U.S.A. These plotted histories(many times not linear by the way)spill you through hundreds of years of stuff you don't think 'we' could do and up into 1992. Instead of pushing the weary citizen reader to the safety of the beach and THE END you will realize it is 2004 and we, the U.S.A. are the same.
If you cannot suspend belief you will bend over dazed, thoughts spinning like an errant compass, by the time you finish a few decimals of the first chapter, let alone if you can possibly fight through the moral exhaustion to reach 288.
If you have heart you will finish. If this is your first Chomsky, 288 will not be the end as the Notes and Bibliography begin and spider into more places to go. This is the densest calorie of writing as behind each thought and twitch you sense the colossus of study behind that tiny notice called a footnote. You will feel that this word 'footnote' should be dismissed as a derogatory description for these 288 moments - they should be called Massivenotes or something.
This is a sorrowful journey that is impossible for rationals to contend with. All i can do afterward is know 'yes, i am American.' I feel as if orphaned and wanting to know who I-Am-We-Us are. And 501 hasn't left me alone.
Strong...........2004-07-31
This is a powerful book indeed. The facts are there for those willing to check them out. For some people this maybe hard to acknowledge , but Chomsky is writing an account of History that everybody should take a time to read and investigate. In so doing , I am sure that you will have a new understanding of how things are , how the world really works and why.
When you read all those books praising globalization , world free trade and neoliberal economics...take a time and verify...go to the real world...and see what is really happening to the majority of the people...Capitalism is a better system , I'm sure...but some adjustments need to be done to the way the big economies are trying to impose it to the little countries....It is creating more poverty and social unrest..and I am afraid that there will come a time when we are not going to be able to control this...
A Master Work by a Master Scholar.......2003-11-14
Chomsky's Year 501 is another engrossing work from this erudite and learned treasure and scholar. A good place to start is the concluding chapter as it presents an incredible analysis with an astonishing array of facts and figures relating to the domestic American scene and the conditions that have befallen the average U.S. worker. He brings the same studious approach to this area of inquiry as he's done for the last forty years regarding the international arena and linguistics. Along with Michael Parenti's Democracy For the Few, it's simply some of the best work available on this pressing topic. Deindustrialization, increasing underemployment, rising poverty, the increasing gap between the super rich and middle class, and the business community's relentless assault on unions - Chomsky touches on all these issues. He summarizes these developments by writing that the United States is showing the characteristics of a Third World country by becoming a two-tiered society. That the child poverty rate in New York city is approaching forty percent is just one example of the many nuggets of information a reader can garner from Year 501.
Of course the majority of the book covers an incredible amount of ground pertaining to international politics and economics with particular emphasis on Latin America. As always these passages shine with insight and brilliance while being backed up with rigorous documentation and research. Colonization to neo-imperialism are broached along with the two rip off machines known as the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.
Since he's always refused to punk out to mainstream corporate opinion Chomsky's a somewhat cruel reminder to the orthodox pundits and intellectuals of what intellectual responsibility is truly about. The New Yorker recently ran a hit piece against him; this of course demonstrates that he's still pontificating and writing truths the black-tie cocktail party set refuse to countenance. Year 501 follows in the tradition of a long line of Chomsky books that make the establishmentarians a bit uncomfortable.
Devastating indictment of Western capitalism.......2002-10-15
This is a book by Chomsky that is probably even more scholarly than usual. At least in the way it is written. Chomsky wrote this book on the 500th anniversary in 1992 of the beginnings of the invasion of much of the world of what Adam Smith refered to, in a rather narrow context as "the savage injustice of the Europeans ("revealing himself to be an early practicioner of the crime of 'political correctness,'"Chomsky comments sardonically)". Chomsky begins his survey by analyzing the policies of the major European powers and the United States as they grew to dominate the world. Such policies., he explains, are not the free market doctrines stressed by right wing talk radio hosts, University of Chicago professors and other such bores and frauds but by massive state subsides, huge tarrifs to block foreign competitors, extreme violence and colonial occupation.
Places like India and Bengal (Bangladesh) which were highly advanced industrial societies by the mid-1700's but all of the industries which were superior to their counterparts in Britain were deliberately undermined or simply forced out of existence by the British colonisers. India and Bangladesh became extremely poor, feudal agricultural countries supplying Britain with raw materials and as a captive market for British goods. The latter is a familiar pattern outlined by Chomsky in this book. The West, since World war II, dominated by the U.S., has always sought any way it could to block advanced economic development in the third world. The exceptions to this that Chomsky points to are Japan and its former colonies in Asia who violated all the laws of the free market to create very dynamic, if, of course, very far from perfect economies. The British, noted Chomsky, started to adopt "free trade" as policy as the United States would do later under similar circumstances, around 1846 when they had no competitors in their field but this changed around 1930 when they, along with the Americans, French and Dutch erected high tarrif walls around Japanese exports to their colonies in Asia with which they could not compete, a major factor in staring Japan's wars of conquest.
He examines the U.S. role in the slaugter of half a million people in Indonesia in 1965 as the independent nationalist Sukarno was overthrown and "a staggering mass slaughter of communists and pro-communits." The U.S. media, rejoyced at the massacre of landless peasants and the destruction of the only mass-based political party the communist PKI. General Suharto took power initiating ongoing plunder and exploitaion of Indonesia's resources by Western corporations while engaging in mass murder in the U.S. backed occupation of East Timor and elsewhere. He examines the media reaction to this slaugter and the reaction back in 1990 when this great event was brought up again by Kathy Kadane.
He examines the showcases of capitalism in the third world like Brazil, whose liberal capitalist president Goulart was overthrown in 1964 with U.S. aid by a group of Neo-nazi generals who compiled over the next few decades a truly horrific human rights record but who were praised for producing an "economic miracle" as the population sunk into quite horrific levels of malnourishment and disease and land became ever more concentrated in fewer hands and millions of street children arose in the big cities. And Nicaragua where the massive terrorism, celebrated by the media liberals that Chomsky quotes, brought to force upon the Nicaraguan people a defeat of the Sandanistas in "democratic election" in 1990 (the 1984 election won by the Sandinstas dissapearing into the memory hole). This has predictably resulted in a terrible rise in starvation and disease and drug running and street children and on.
He continues with an in-depth examination of the woes of Haiti and the American and Western efforts to ravage it since 1804, and particularly since 1915 when the U.S. invaded and reestablished virtual slavery, with a U.S. imposed constitution ratified with five percent of the voting public participainting under the U.S. marine bayonets, reversing the ban on foreign ownership of land.
He compares the podering of the unique evil of Japan in being unable to fully face up to their past crimes and the comparable ignoring of things like the hundreds of thousand of tortured victims of U.S. chemical warfare in South Vietname, which occasionally elicits a comment in the science pages of the newspapers about how we are missing a great opportunity to study the effects of dioxin on a control population
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Year 501 : The Conquest Continues
Noam Chomsky
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Year 501: The Conquest Continues
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Amazon.com
Hard Green, by conservative engineer-attorney Peter Huber, pulls off a neat trick: redefining the terms of discussion to win by default. Environmentalists will be surprised to learn that green rightfully refers only to conservation of wilderness lands--certainly a noble cause, and just about the only green issue likely to fire up traditional conservatives. Well worth reading by those of all political perspectives, Huber's writing is as clear and thorough as you'd expect from someone with his training. His assertions that shortages of fuel, food, and space for waste will be solved by ingenuity seem dazzlingly hopeful, but ultimately his arguments come down to faith. Much stronger are his discussions of privatizing pollution and wilderness protection, which should open eyes across the board. Moreover, his analysis of recycling programs and their ilk gives a much-needed kick in the pants to complacent types who think their garbage sorting is helping anything but their consciences. While it's unlikely to change the political Green movement, much less supplant it, Hard Green will certainly encourage thinking among the thoughtful--and that might be all we need. --Rob Lightner
Book Description
A strongly-argued critique of environmentalism from the right - the conservative's answer to Al Gore's Earth in the Balance.
Libertarian activist Peter Huber argues that liberal or "Soft Green" environmental policies do exactly the opposite of what they intend, and lays out the conservative or Hard Green approach to the problem. While both groups share the larger objectives, the Hard Greens disagree with and reject most of what the Softs diagnose as the source of despoliation and environmental decay, and accordingly reject most of the solutions that Softs prescribe. Chapter by chapter, Hard Green takes on the big issues of environmental discourse from scarcity and pollution to efficiency and waste disposal. Designed to radically change the terms of environmental debate, Hard Green will be a manifesto for every conservative who cares about the environment.
This book sets out the case for Hard Green, a conservative environmental agenda. Modern environmentalism, Peter Huber argues, destroys the environment. Captured as it has been by the Soft Green oligarchy of scientists, regulators, and lawyers, modern environmentalism does not conserve forests, oceans, lakes, and streams - it hastens their destruction. For all its scientific pretension, Soft Green is not green at all. Its effects are the opposites of green.
This book lays out the alternative: a return to Yellowstone and the National Forests, the original environmentalism of Theodore Roosevelt and the conservation movement. Chapter by chapter, Hard Green takes on the big issues of environmental discourse from scarcity and pollution to efficiency and waste disposal. This is the Hard Green manifesto: Rediscover T.R. Reaffirm the conservationist ethic. Expose the Soft Green fallacy. Reverse the Soft Green agenda. Save the environment from the environmentalists.
Customer Reviews:
Provocative but would not stand up to its own criticisms.......2007-06-12
This is an intentionally provocative book from a politically conservative environmentalist. His core claim is that environmentalists should focus on preserving land and whole ecosystems, not on regulating pollution or greenhouse gases. Land preservation is easier for people to understand politically, it doesn't require debatable scientific judgments that politicians and citizens can't really make, and in any case dangerous levels of pollution will ultimately show up as harming national parks, forests, and wildernesses. Thus, a focus on land preservation will also make sure that the other things in the environment are going right.
Along the way, Huber likes to prick holes in a lot of environmental orthodoxies. Petroleum and nuclear power have helped save the whales by eliminating the demand for whale oil for heating. Organic food requires more land than intensive farming. Landfilling is better than recycling because it can sequester enough carbon in the waste to stop global warming; composting and recycling keep the carbon at the surface and contribute to global warming.
All those are provocative but, unfortunately, very poorly sourced. Huber clearly cherry picks things that he reads that agree with his biases, and does not think critically about both sides of these claims. The book is also poorly sourced. To take only one example, he claims on page 68 that a full minivan is more energy efficient than a half-full passenger train. No source is given. Who knows whether that's true or not? I wouldn't trust it, but it might be true.
As this suggests, Huber has his own orthodoxies. Like other conservatives, he likes markets, and he believes that markets will solve all resource scarcity problems. Before we run out of oil, for example, Huber expects increasing oil prices to provide incentives for research into alternative energy sources. That assumes a pretty smooth process of change, but neither economics nor biology has a lot of confidence in smooth, continuous processes of change any more - - a lot of change involves discontinuities and qualitative changes.
There's a lot to like in the overall argument about preserving lands. The core problem lies in the interaction between regulating the large (land) and the small (pollutants). Great Smoky Mountain National Park has some of the most polluted air in the US, because of emissions from Tennessee Valley factories and power plants. How do you preserve the Smokies' ecosystem from these pollutants without regulating the pollutants? Huber doesn't have a good answer.
Still, a real strength of the book stems from Huber's insistence that environmental questions are not absolutes but comparisons. For example, *all* technologies harm the environment. The real question is: what are the costs and benefits of technology X versus technology Y? We should be comparing nuclear power with coal (and with other technologies), not complaining about each in a vacuum.
Another strength is Huber's rhetorical abilities. The book reads well, though parts of the chapters tend to repeat one another and the book is too long. It's provocative and should lead you to rethink things that you think you know. Unfortunately, Huber's weak sourcing, strident bias, and lack of critical thinking make the book less than it could be. It has the potential for four or five stars but only earns three.
Only the rich can afford to be green.......2006-11-27
In a relentless assault on the ideas that underlie the modern environmental movement, lawyer and engineer Peter Huber knocks the props from under some of the fundamental assumptions of what he calls the Soft Greens.
"Hard Green" is primarily a book about morality, analysis and policy, not a debate about data. In the most persuasive part of his book, Huber, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, shows that computer models of complex systems, like global climate, are worthless.
The problem is not that our computers are too feeble to give us answers if we ask the right questions. The problem is that we do not know enough to ask meaningful questions.
Huber shows that, if even one feedback loop is missed or mis-sized, the models all end in catastrophe. When you get the same output no matter what the input was, that is not science.
It is anti-science, or, as Huber calls it, trans-science.
"Hard Green" covers a great deal of territory. While Huber uses logical analysis to demolish computer modeling, he uses historical experience to demonstrate, again convincingly, that the concepts of "sustainability" and "carrying capacity" are meaningless.
Thomas Malthus, 200 years ago, made the classic statement of carrying capacity. Since then, every limit anyone has proposed has been shattered. "No law of geophysics, biology, engineering or economics decrees: So far, but no farther," Huber writes.
But logical arguments mean little to the sizable segment of the SG movement that is frankly anti-rational. Huber has a challenge for these mystics, too.
The predictions of catastrophe have not come true, nor is there any evidence doomsday is close. Huber singles out Charles Perrow, Al Gore, Paul Ehrlich and Amory Lovins as prophets whose prophecies never come true.
Perrow, a Yale sociologist, started predicting inevitable catastrophes in the mid-'80s, and though none has occurred yet, he is still doing it. He was predicting a Y2K computer disaster as late as Jan. 6, 2000.
Obviously, something other than evidence is fueling the SG theology.
In its place, Huber offers "A Conservative Manifesto," which states that wealth is greener than poverty, free markets are greener than minute regulation, genetically engineered crops are greener than organic foods and that "living in three dimensions" is greener than living in two, as the Soft Greens do.
"Living in three dimensions" means extracting our power from the sterile depths of the Earth (nuclear, gas, oil or coal, in descending order of preference) instead of plowing under wild green to raise "biomass" for boilers or smothering it with windmills.
"The peasant hunched over his cow-dung fire is not efficient, not green; he is just poor," writes Huber in the shortest summary statement of his approach.
He also rejects the idea that green wealth is a zero-sum game. When it comes to the rich nations and the poor nations, "The notion that our wealth derives from -- worse still, causes -- their poverty is arrant nonsense."
Human ingenuity, he says, will solve our problems, unless the regulators stifle it.
But expecting ingenious solutions is just as much a prediction as expecting a catastrophe through a computer model, though without the fraudulent mathematical flounces and furbelows that garb the Club of Rome.
Huber is not so dense as to miss this, and he rejects untrammeled market solutions; but he does not give any practical advice about how to pick the problems that can safely be left to the market and those that cannot.
Markets fail, notably in providing roads; and human ingenuity does not always come through, even if the problem is something as urgent as malaria.
But the world is complex and humans are complex. It is not reasonable to expect to predict very precisely the results of their interaction, though the Soft Greens are never shy to try.
"Hard Green" does not tell us exactly how to proceed, but it is a compelling argument against the environmental movement as it exists now. Who, for example, would disagree with him when he says we would be better off if, instead of using Superfund billions to dig up chemicals in one place and bury them in another, we had spent the money buying up beaches, forests, rivers and mountains and leaving them wild?
Mean Green.......2006-08-12
The happy message of Huber's book Hard Green is that "the only limits to how much food we can grow, energy we can extract, houses we can build, miles we can travel, pigs we can breed, diseases we can cure, are the limits of human ingenuity. And they keep receding." The unhappy message is that certain (stupid) people seem intent on messing up paradise. The main lesson to learn from reading Huber's book Hard Green is that if you disagree with him you are stupid and dangerous, if not down right evil.
The villains: Al Gore, organic gardeners (production of organic food requires far too much land), alternate energy boosters (creates inefficiencies and, again, uses far too much land), mass transit boosters, recyclers (wastes energy), global warming phobiacs, and anyone that interferes with free markets and private property rights. (The one role for government is to preserve some wild areas without interfering with property rights.) But the biggest villains of all are soft-headed, pseudo-scientist, environmentalists who use computer models to predict catastrophes. Their predictions are almost never right and they demand ever increasing wealth to be spent on ever diminishing (or non-existent) returns.
The solution to all our worries: Wealth (if not squandered by stupid people). Let the markets work and the planet will become increasingly green (rich people tend to promote wilderness set asides, poor people are limited by their struggle for survival). The solution to overcrowding: Live in three dimensions -- fly in the sky (less space needed for roads) and mine underground fuels (less space needed for solar dependent life supports) -- more space for wilderness. The solution to global warming: Sun screen and sun glasses. The solution to scarcity: Markets ("With markets in command, scarcity is always giving way to abundance"). The solution to pollution: Privatize it. The bottom line: Don't worry, "we can probably survive just fine in ecological rubble." 169. "Our interests in nature are aesthetic, not moral." 204.
While Huber savagely caricatures his enemies, presents their views in the worst possible light, and at times resorts to simple name calling, he is generally guilty of all the faults he sees in others. He constantly complains that others offer sweeping opinions that disregard a balanced view of the relevant evidence or go beyond all possible evidence. Huber does the same thing in spades. Huber seems to have the knack of making you want to disagree with him even when you think he is right (and there are plenty of times when I think he is right). He disserves the Hard Green cause. Ultimately, Huber's work is seriously compromised by his failure to see that our interest in nature does have a moral dimension - a moral dimension that does not pit human against slug, but recognizes that questions about how we care for our farms and cities, our homes and communities cannot be separated from how we care for each other, and cannot be reduced to mere aesthetics. Nature is not confined to wilderness set asides. Huber has an impoverished view of wealth. He has a restricted view of Green. And he seems to have mistaken his voice for the voice of God.
most everything you know is wrong.......2006-06-22
This book deserves five stars just for challenging the modern environmentalist orthodoxy that pervades much of popular culture.
Taking apart the pillars of the environmentalist movement from its earliest days, Hard Green does a masterful and entertaining job of deconstructing the popular wisdom by showing that we are not running out of energy; conservation is not the best way to solve our energy problems; environmental models are rarely if ever accurate or useful; technology is the best way to keep the earth green and humanity prosperous; that true conservation cares about the tangibles like trees, forests, animals, people and oceans, not microscopic trace amounts of chemicals in our drinking water; that "organic" food is worse for you and the environment than you know; that the spokespeople for the green movement are most often wrong; that most environmentalists do not understand or trust markets, technology, and human ingenuity enough; and that those who often speak the loudest on behalf of the environment are the most wrong.
This book should be required reading for anyone who cares about the environment or wants to engage in the environmental debate. Books about the environment can often be too boring or too hyperbolic, but this book is neither. It's entertaining, irreverent, loaded with facts, and written so well it's fun to read. Definitely recommend it to all. Five stars for Peter Huber!
A Screed Against Reason.......2004-08-31
Huber's argument does not take into account the interconnectedness of nature. To him, if humans cannot see a problem with thier own eyes, it does not exist. This line of thinking is curiously primitive. The perceptive powers of human beings were formed during the evolution of our species, in which survival did not entail managing the Earth's enviromental woes. Survival only entailed the management of enviromental problems in our immediate vacinity. Thus our evolved "astetic" sense of problems in our enviroment is limited to those problems which posed dangers to our species as we evolved. According to Huber only problems sensed by this primitive awareness can be considered real "hard" challenges to the enviroment. All other challenges to the enviroment, sensed by different means (for instance satilite data, computer models, scientific studies) must be classified as "soft" challenges, because they are imperceptable to our evolved senses. This is absolute hogwash!! Humans evolved to live primitive lives on the plains of Africa. Now that we have formed advanced civillizations there are bound to be concepts and problems that we can percieve only through the use of science, computers, or machines, and not with our eyes and ears. Just because mining is underground is imperceptable to humans dosen't mean it cannot have delterious effects upon the ecosystem we depend upon. Just because we cannot see, smell, taste, or hear carbon monoxide pollution dosen't mean its not deadly. This book, at its heart, is a screed against reason that no enviromentalist should take seriously. The author has no training in the enviromental sciences, and is financed by a right-wing think tank. His ideas are only provocative because they go against the grain, not because they make any sense. It's kinda like saying the holocaust never happened. You get attention, but no respect. This man and his screed against reason should recieve niether.
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Forest Products Journal, published by Forest Products Society on January 1, 2001. The length of the article is 856 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Hard Green: Saving the Environment from the Environmentalists.
Author: David H. Jackson
Publication:
Forest Products Journal (Refereed)
Date: January 1, 2001
Publisher: Forest Products Society
Volume: 51
Issue: 1
Page: 7
Distributed by Thomson Gale
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