Book Description
The Perfect Storm on the prairie, Storm Warning is a compulsively readable account of one of the most terrible tornadoes in history -- and the extraordinary people who kept it from becoming the deadliest.
May 3, 1999, is a day that Oklahomans will never forget. By the time the sun set over a ravaged plain, some 71 tornadoes had claimed 11,000 homes and businesses and caused a billion dollars in damages. One of them was a mile-wide monster of incredible power, the fiercest F5 twister to hit a metropolitan area, and whose 300 mph winds were the fastest ever recorded on the planet.
Veteran journalist Nancy Mathis draws on numerous interviews to weave the story of those few terrifying hours that irrevocably changed the lives of many Oklahomans. Storm Warning features Kara Wiese, who fought to save her son from the fatal winds, and Charlie Cusack, who followed the tornado's progress on television until it came knocking on his front door. Amazingly, only thirty-eight people perished at the hands of the Oklahoma F5. Many lives were saved by the efforts of professionals such as Ted Fujita, the creator of the Fujita Scale (dubbed "Mr. Tornado" for his relentless pursuit to unravel a twister's mysteries); the oft-criticized but dogged government meteorologists; and Gary England, a resourceful TV weatherman whose tireless efforts prepared hundreds of people in the tornado's path. Storm Warning alternates between personal stories and the history of the struggle to understand this bewildering force of Mother Nature, creating a nail-biting, captivating look at surviving the fury from the skies.
Customer Reviews:
Gripping Tale of our Killer Storms.......2007-06-17
Tornadoes are the most powerful storms known, with an F5 monster reaching 300 mph winds. Fortunately they are far smaller than hurricanes and so do not usually cause the extensive damage that hurricanes can. The localized damage is often nearly total!
Nancy Mathis in her book "Storm Warning: The Story of a Killer Tornado" chronicles the story of one F5 tornado in particular, the one that struck Oklahoma City in early May of 1999. She provides much historical background, including the story of Ted Fujita, who survived World War II in Japan by a series of apparently random events to produce the Fujita scale to to aid in the understanding and prediction of tornadoes. Another important player, Gary England, pioneered tornado prediction when the United States Weather Service was unable to do so. Numerous people worked on developing the ability to give at least several minutes warning of an approaching storm. In the case of the Oklahoma City storm of May 3, 1999, this paid off big time, with many fewer fatalities than would have happened otherwise.
Nancy Mathis tells this story with great skill. Before the reader is through they develop a wide respect for the obsessional people (including storm chasers) who have continued to develop an understanding of the formidable storms. The reader also begins to understand the power and fascination of these nearly unique monsters of the American Great Plains, where 80% of all tornadoes develop.
I have seen the result of the passage of a weak tornado in Florida (in fact I crossed its path just an hour before it went through). Even though the storm skimmed the treetops, it dropped several long-leaf pines into the roofs of apartment complexes. Luckily no one was hurt, but it was close. These are not storms with which to trifle!
This is a great summery of tornado research and history, plus a great description of a particularly savage storm. If you live anywhere were tornadoes can strike (the whole United States, but especially the Midwest), you should read this book!
compelling book about tornadoes.......2007-05-18
This was a book i could not put down, despite the author's letting us know right from the beginning who lived, who died, and how big the killer tornado was. Mathis' description of the history of weather forecasting was fascinating, and her summary of the science of weather (and tornadoes in particular) was easy to understand and compelling. Her recommendations on how to survive a tornado are vital for anyone who lives in "tornado alley" as well as for people who live in areas rarely visited by these potential killers. I recommend this book to anyone interested in weather and its effects on people.
A Great Book on Tornados.......2007-05-13
Nancy is a fantastic author and did a great job with this book. An enjoyable read.
Like an IMAX movie in hardcover.......2007-05-01
Just finished reading Nancy Mathis's Storm Warning in one sitting. Having grown up in Oklahoma and spent more than two decades as an airline pilot, I thought I knew a thing or two about hook echos, doppler radar and microbursts. Mathis nails these down--making the science interesting and easy to understand. But she also tells the story of this terrible twister in a way that puts the reader right in the middle of the action. And that is scary, especially if you happen to be reading Storm Warning during a blustery spring storm, as I did. I could picture the eerie green sky as the storm chasers sped across the plains and smell the dank culvert where victims perished. The blow-by-blow description of the destruction of a two story house in 20-25 seconds is as vivid and chilling as anything I've ever read. Do yourself a favor though: read it on a quiet sunny day with calm winds.
A Riveting Read.......2007-05-01
Ok, so who knew that a book about tornado forcasting could make me tearful at its ending. It is a tribute to the author's ability to thread the stories of the lives so affected by these events through, in and around the science that makes this book read like wonderful fiction while carrying the burden of informing like nonfiction. There are two layers of the human element here, the victims of the killer storms, some of whom heal and many who don't, but the other story is of the men who pursued the science of forcasting, both for the love of the science itself, and for the advancement of the common good. The people I came to know in this book will be with me for a long time. This is, simply stated, a great read.
Book Description
While draught and desertification are intensifying around the world, corporations are aggressively converting free-flowing water into bottled profits. The water wars of the twenty-first century may match-or even surpass-the oil wars of the twentieth. In Water Wars: Privatization, Pollution and Profit, Vandana Shiva, "the world's most prominent radical scientist" (the Guardian), shines a light on activists who are fighting corporate maneuvers to convert this life-sustaining resource into more gold for the elites.
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In Water Wars, Shiva uses her remarkable knowledge of science and society to outline the emergence of corporate culture and the historical erosion of communal water rights. Using the international water trade and industrial activities such as damming, mining, and aquafarming as her lens, Shiva exposes the destruction of the earth and the disenfranchisement of the world's poor as they are stripped of rights to a precious common good.
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In her passionate, feminist style, Shiva celebrates the spiritual and traditional role water has played in communities throughout history, and warns that water privatization threatens cultures and livelihoods worldwide. Shiva calls for a movement to preserve water access for all, and offers a blueprint for global resistance based on examples of successful campaigns.
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Vandana Shiva is a world-renowned environmental leader and recipient of the 1993 Alternative Nobel Peace Prize (the Right Livelihood Award). She is author of several books, including Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply (South End Press, 2000); Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge (South End Press, 1997); and Staying Alive (St. Martin's Press, 1989). Shiva is a leader, along with Ralph Nader and Jeremy Rifkin, in the International Forum on Globalization. Before becoming an activist, Shiva was one of India's leading physicists.
Customer Reviews:
The Single Most Important Book You Can Read Today.......2007-02-28
the global water crisis is the biggest issue we will face in our lifetimes and not much is being done. This book puts things in a human light and makes solutions seem possible.
Stop Bottled Water Industries
Protect Global Commons
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Don't waste your money.......2007-01-07
Written by a so called academic, this is a series of essays which never should have been published. Over -priced and over reviewed, whoever approved of publishing this travesty should be fired.
Brutal. Brutal brutal brutal........2006-04-03
In contrast to what others have written, this book is brutal. It isn't that Ms. Shiva doesn't have passion, she does. It isn't that she cannot write, she can. The book is brutal because it is painfully one-sided, seemingly written for no other reason than to pander to those that think as she does.
While the book highlights examples of water mismanagement, Ms. Shiva's ideology is so apparent one has to wonder what she has left out. For example, she repeatedly mentions the use of a small, electric motor to pump enormous amounts of water far more efficiently that human beings can. Eventually said motor pumps more water than the system can replace and does damage. Fine. While Ms. Shiva notes that the motor does damage, she seems unwilling to address the obvious: the farmer who turned the motor on could just as easily have turned the motor off, thereby avoiding the damage. Instead of working for hours to get water, the farmers could have used the motor to pump only what they needed, saving time and labor for other tasks. While she may have a personal preference to use humans for manual labor, blaming the little motor (and by extension, the modernization involved) is intellectually dishonest.
As another example, she mentions how the evil United States would not approve the Kyoto Treaty. She is right the U.S. has not. Yet she never notes that many people consider Kyoto to be fatally flawed--it exempts China, India, and others from emissions limits. One does not need to accept or deny Kyoto as an example of an efficient or effective solution to global warming, but given the partisan ideology presented in Water Wars, one can never be sure Ms. Shiva presented any information fairly or accurately.
Furthermore, Ms. Shiva continues with such platitudes as, "The corporation's selfish desire for profit causes all the problems; the WTO, World Bank and U.S. are run by corporations; only real democratic community control will solve these problems." The quote is representative of many social critics: argument by cliche--the discourse ends as quickly as it begins. Ms. Shiva often closes her argument in her topic sentences, for example on page 87, "Not only has the World Bank played a major role in the creation of water scarcity and pollution, it is now transforming that scarcity into a market opportunity for water companies." Or comments such as this on page xiii, "This forced apportion of resources from people is a form of terrorism--corporate terrorism." Comments like this suggest Ms. Shiva is unable to persuasively write for change, that she has no real arguments, just partisan ideology. Unfortunately, environmental thinkers like Ms. Shiva may be right. But with writing like this, they will never be heard except by those who already agree.
Sadly, Ms. Shiva also seems focused on spiritual matters at the expense of making her case. For example, she includes a multi-page appendix of the ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHT different names for the Ganges River. Frankly, who cares how many names there are? There could be 763 of them--not one of which would matter if the locals drain the river for crops or if Halliburton drains the river and sells it back to them.
As a former physicist, Ms. Shiva would have done her readers a favor and written a fascinating book if she had simply applied the intellectual rigor of her physics training to her thesis--whatever that was. For those that want their ideology reinforced, this book is wonderful. For those trying to learn about the problems concerning water and water usage, there are plenty of other sources that present information without overt ideology and bias. `Nuff said.
Right Versus Left.......2005-10-26
Vandana is an entertaining writer. She is passionate about injustice. Shiva is a welcome antidote to the rantings of right wing ratbags from noisy think-tanks.
A chapter of Shiva contrasted with a chapter of anyone from the Cato Institue, makes for an entertaining exercise in contrasting views of how our world should work.
One does not have to agree with all she believes to enjoy her writing or to learn from it.
Earthy Wisdom About Water.......2004-10-06
Water rights and access to water are a commons. They inherently belong to all people collectively, from which to benefit and to be responsible for as stewards. Including being a guide to participating in popular resistance, this is a history of how the principle of water as a commons has evolved as part and parcel of the evolutionary rise of the human species. Also catalogued is the very recent advent of the concept of water as a privatized commodity.
Although Shiva doesn't say it in so many words, the book often reads as a direct indictment of the United States because many of the problems she enumerates trace back directly to the fossil fuel economy. The US is the most egregious and careless contributor to the degradation of the environment. Although the US stands to experience a large part of the devastation global warming is already wreaking, perhaps the loss of Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas to a potential 2 foot rise in sea levels, many poor and island nations will bear the disproportionate brunt of global warming's effects.
This book might easily be perceived as a treatise in Luddism. Shiva says almost every so-called advance in water management, as for example diverting and draining rivers, which is necessarily a move to centralize and privatize water management, results in catastrophic social and ecological consequences - especially natural disasters such as floods, supercyclones, and droughts. When water is managed locally and collectively by the indigenous as a commons, its use is equitable, ecologically sound, and sustainable - words of wisdom from mouth of justice. When water is treated as a commodity, and corporatized the unforeseen consequences, which are quite serious, include pollution and climate change.
Shiva documents many natural and man-made disasters that have resulted from this practical and ideological shift in water management. She draws a direct causal relationship between technological application in water management and ecological disruption and social conflict. The worst of these, a supercyclone that devastated the state of Orissa in India in 1999, "damaged 1.83 million houses and 1.8 million acres of paddy crops in 12 coastal districts. Eighty percent of the coconut trees were uprooted or broken in half, and all the banana and papaya plantations were wiped out. More than 300,000 cattle perished, more than 1,500 fisherman and fisherwomen lost their entire source of livelihood...local workers estimate the (human) toll to be about 20,000."
Shiva is well-studied in water management and its history. She draws from a rich array of sources, many obscure but important; a large number are cites of her own past voluminous work. Her arguments are intuitive more than deductive. Once you accept her premise of water resources as a commons, and she makes the argument gently, but unrelentingly, as if it is a self-evident truth, the rest of her conclusions unfold cogently, compellingly, and of their own accord.
The WTO and World Bank involvement in water management are ominous signs of water's commodification, self-destructive and suicidal, teaches Shiva. Small groups resisting these developments have won several victories. Arundhati Roy among other prominent Indians has enjoined the struggle against the Narmada Dam project, a mammoth project of corporatization in India.
Projects like Narmada, and there are many of them, are done under the rubric of capitalism and "free trade." These last two terms understood in practice, as should be obvious by now, as the socialization of risks and costs and the privatization of profits for the rich, and fiscal discipline and restraint for the poor. This corporate welfare takes the form of subsidies, give-aways, tax breaks, and displacement of the indigenous.
This is a very focused study of water rights, impressively researched and well-documented. Shiva presents the facts and lets you uncover the truth for yourself, like wiping a mirror clear of dust.
The historical shift of water as a commons to water as a commodity is almost the same as the history of colonialism. Shiva traces a richly researched history of British colonization of India synonymous there with this shift in water management. Her writing is sometimes dry but rich in fact and research. In wading deep into the minutiae of water management's history, and the consequences of its commodification, Shiva shows that much of the supposed progress in the administration and management of water rights have really been retrograde movements from policies and practicalities of fairness and equitability. She also warns ominously that the 21st Century will see wars and conflicts over this resource in much the same way the 20th did over oil.
The clash of water as a commons versus its degradation into a commodity was perhaps best illustrated in Cochambamba, Bolivia in 1999. In response to the sell off of a municipal resource to a foreign corporation, a coalition of militant peasant groups formed the Coalition in Defense of Water and Life. It organized to address skyrocketing water bills and poor service. Of all corporations, Bechtel, a huge military contractor to the Pentagon, "bought" water rights in Cochambamba. It wasn't without several serious skirmishes that the peasant groups prevailed and reasserted their sovereignty over water. Bechtel exited Bolivia, and the United States government took up its cause, suing Bolivia on behalf of Bechtel in the World Trade Court. That case is still pending.
Shiva makes an important contribution. As impressive as the book itself is the exposure to an activist with a wide knowledge and a rich oeuvre. She wraps up her study with a look at the sacredness of water in India. The Ganges River is traditionally one of the holiest sites in India. The multinational corporations would prefer to see this resource as an asset on their ledgers. Shiva never mentions specifically what she is doing activist-wise to join the struggle. But it's obvious from her energy and devotion to the issue that she is very actively involved. She makes it clear she is for justice for the great masses of people before the interests of those who would commodify water.
Amazon.com
In the autumn of 1973, the writer Peter Matthiessen set out in the company of zoologist George Schaller on a hike that would take them 250 miles into the heart of the Himalayan region of Dolpo, "the last enclave of pure Tibetan culture on earth." Their voyage was in quest of one of the world's most elusive big cats, the snow leopard of high Asia, a creature so rarely spotted as to be nearly mythical; Schaller was one of only two Westerners known to have seen a snow leopard in the wild since 1950.
Published in 1978, The Snow Leopard is rightly regarded as a classic of modern nature writing. Guiding his readers through steep-walled canyons and over tall mountains, Matthiessen offers a narrative that is shot through with metaphor and mysticism, and his arduous search for the snow leopard becomes a vehicle for reflections on all manner of matters of life and death. In the process, The Snow Leopard evolves from an already exquisite book of natural history and travel into a grand, Buddhist-tinged parable of our search for meaning. By the end of their expedition, having seen wolves, foxes, rare mountain sheep, and other denizens of the Himalayas, and having seen many signs of the snow leopard but not the cat itself, Schaller muses, "We've seen so much, maybe it's better if there are some things that we don't see."
That sentiment, as well as the sense of wonder at the world's beauty that pervades Matthiessen's book, ought to inform any journey into the wild. --Gregory McNamee
Customer Reviews:
a great travel log with a little zen.......2007-09-18
Matthiessen is a talented writer who consistently manages to capture the essence of what he sees. He insists that he is a fiction writer, first and foremost, but the honesty and vibrance of his words in nonfiction are phenomenal. As an "travel log"-type book, this is one of the best. His interactions with the sherpas and his colleague, GS, are human and believable. There are extremely personal moments throughout the book, concerning his first wife and kids and missed opportunities with them, since he spent so much time traveling. A section about a bowl makes me sad even now. The discussion of the animals of the region ( not just the leopard) are very detailed and accurate. Particularly, sections that are devoted to Schaller's attempt to distinguish between goats and sheep. While the leopard, itself, adds a magical quality, a more intriguing creature is the yeti. I became a full-time fan when he spoke of it.
Beyond the actual journey is the constant discussion of Zen. The history and facts he gives are deep, at times. There are many footnotes. It is an excellent resource for Zen students and it's interesting to see how it fits into his life. Zazen in his tent, for instance. Zen isn't something to be learned, but this book and Cave of Tigers are two that every aspiring student of zen should read.
He talks about his wilder days and where he finds himself going at the time (metaphysically speaking, of course.) I picked up this book because I had seen the film At Play in the Fields of the Lord. It is like nothing I have ever read. I still randomly reread passages to experience it again. This is a book that changes how people feel.
Reviewed by Shelton1.......2007-09-11
The SNOW LEOPARD - Interesting descriptions of Tibet back country and customs but author constantly contradicts himself, he seems disoriented like he might have done too many drugs in his life, imagine that, he is a self admitted psychedelic user and he writes like it. Matthiessen demeans his Sherpas while intimating some sense of loss at leaving his 8-year-old son at home one year after his wife died while he treks around Tibet for two months, inexcusable!
to the mountaintops and back . . ........2007-08-19
Matthiessen and George Schaller's 3 month trek into the most remote area (Dolpo) between Nepal and Tibet to study the blue sheep and possibly sight the elusive snow leopard. With lucid and fascinating prose, Matthiessen describes the lives of his Sherpa companions; the rough traveling conditions over snow blocked mountain passes by yak; the monks and hermits in remote monasteries; and of course, his own struggle to attain a spiritual peace triggered by the death of his wife.
The writing has its self-indulgent moments; yet, the author is honest about his searching and why that has brought him to the Himalayas. The quest to glimpse a snow leopard turns out to be a mirror image of Matthiessen's own inner quest for enlightenment. Leaving his young son behind in New England with relatives causes much remorse (and self-pity) on his part; however, the need to go deeper into himself is understandable after the loss he has experienced.
Matthiessen's articulate descriptions of his journey seem to offset the regrets he feels. He is honest enough to admit his deficiencies while he works on his awareness of observing himself in these alien surroundings.
The descriptions of this process are articulate and compelling.
Peter Matthiessen is a naturalist; he mixes this experience with his spiritual musings so that the blend is a very interesting read. This is a multi-level book: a zoological exploration coupled with a man's search for spiritual meaning through zen practice.
This writing is graceful yet deep with insight. A high recommendation to those with an interest in finding meaning via a man who has been to the mountaintops and back.
Extracts: A Field Guide for Iconoclasts
The Cloud Reckoner
Unenlightening.......2007-07-12
I suppose that the spiritual aspects of this book really moved a lot of people, but not me. I found it to be a poor man's version of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It surprised me that the guides, sherpas, porters, and indigenous people were so often regarded as being lazy and dishonest, with few exceptions. This myopic view of the world detracted from any spiritual impact the book might have had. I'll bet if Peter Matthiesen and GS had paid their workers decently, they would not have been abandoned so many times. I've seen it before: so many Americans expect third world people to be really poor and really happy at the same time. That bothered me, and it diminished the significance of his spiritual quest. I think he should get his act together.
Can a book generate a karma all its own? This one does........2007-02-08
The Snow Leopard is not just a book, rather a marvelous mental holiday one can return to as often as one needs, like a literary hitchhiker, to get away from the modernity and electronic technology that swamps us. Matthiessen illuminates the mystery and silence of the Himalayas, and the human need for nature and it's transformational powers.
I read this book every year, and for two years taught it on a college level to over 500 freshman. Yes, freshmen, at 7:00 a.m., who have never even seen snow.
Being a public college and teaching a book with overtly religious themes, I suggested they skip over the "Buddhist bits" if it did not interest them, and stick to the journey, paying attention to PM, George Schaller and the mixed bag of porters and Sherpas who guided them. Funny thing when you tell students not to read something, they go right for it.
To my amazement, they got it. They understood Matthiessen's flaws: the drug use, failed marriages, parental doubts about leaving family once again to pursue "nothing" in one of the remotest places on earth--the Land of Dolpo, where lamas rule and people obey. Students are intimate with the concept of to work for the sake of work; be it one foot in front of the other on a trail in Nepal, or their own path of study; these young people easily saw how humans transforms themselves through their work and passions. They were also quite politically savy, impressed by the results of this remarkable and timeless journey into the heart of the wilderness where it's okay to get lost, make mistakes and fail.
Readers should not ignore the after affects, literal shock waves, both literary and political which came out of this simple journey between a writer and field biologist, who submitted his report on the wildlife numbers to Kathmandu who ten years later created the Shey-Phoksumdo National Park, the largest preserve in Nepal. The snow leopard still lives and is protected because PM and GS walked that path, and more importantly freely shared their observations, not just writing within their fields, but about themselves as human beings and the role human beings play in protecting or destroying what's left of our environment.
Matthiessen much deserved the National Book Award for Contemporary Thought in 1980, and many people do not know The Snow Leopard was to be the cover story for the New York Times Book Review the Sunday the pressmen went on strike for the first and only time in it's history. The review was never run. It did not become the best seller it seemed destined to be, given the glowing reviews of the time.
It has become a cult classic instead, with a karma all its own. It's okay not to "get it" all the first time you read it. It unfolds, like a lotus blossom.
Book Description
Whereas Volume 1 of Endgame presents the problem of civilization, Volume 2 of this pivotal work illustrates our means of resistance. Incensed and hopeful, impassioned and lucid, Endgame leap-frogs the environmental movement's deadlock over our willingness to change our conduct, focusing instead on our ability to adapt to the impending ecological revolution.
Derrick Jensen, activist, author, small farmer, teacher, and philosopher, is the author of A Language Older Than Words and The Culture of Make Believe. A finalist for the 2003 J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize whose writing has been described as "breaking and mending the reader's heart," Jensen's speaking engagements in recent years have packed university auditoriums, conferences, and bookstores nationwide.
Customer Reviews:
Well-written essays from the heart, not from the brain.......2007-10-17
I want to like Derrick Jensen, I really do. I like where he's coming from. I'd probably like to be his neighbor. But, oh, are these books frustrating. (I should note that I'm reviewing both books together, which is how they should be reviewed.)
His book jacket describes Jensen as "author, teacher, activist, small farmer, and leading voice of uncompromising dissent, he regularly stirs auditoriums across the country with revolutionary spirit." I'll have more to say about his "uncompromising dissent" and "revolutionary spirit" later on, but just ponder those phrases for a moment. Think too about how much time he has for each of those activities, if he's serious about any of them. This matters here because a lack of editing mars these books.
These books consist of a bunch of essays, though they're presented as something more. After a while, they read like second drafts of what Jensen writes in his daily journal. As you'd expect in a journal, they often revisits themes, adding a new perspective on old themes or tying together two or more themes that were treated separately before. That's all fine, up to a point, but it ultimately becomes repetitive. Repetition is deadly in a book of 891 pages of text, or 929 pages including end matter.
In the end, Jensen needed to rework this material more extensively than he did. He's a brilliant writer, and it's oh-so-easy to let him take you along on a ride. He is passionate about the environment and provides trenchant criticisms of economic development, civilization, and other matters. But the lack of editing means that he doesn't really have a strong argument overall, and in fact he shrunk back from where I thought he was going. Indeed, he never came back to a number of issues that he had promised earlier that he would return to. These issues, unfortunately, are the hard issues that I really wanted him to address.
Another measure of the unnecessary repetition in these volumes is, I think, the fact that there are a lot more Amazon reviews of Volume I than Volume II - - apparently a lot of people don't feel they need to read the second book even if they liked the first one.
What do his essays concern? Well, Jensen is particularly impassioned about dams and salmon runs. Many (most?) dams are completely uneconomic and survive only because of large government subsidies to the businesses that build them and maintain them. Yet these dams destroy rivers and riparian habitats, and have devastated salmon runs in the Pacific Northwest (where Jensen lives).
Jensen is also a strong critic of civilization. He's right that civilization is ultimately unsustainable. Though it's not often recognized, Jensen *has* to be right that economic growth is unsustainable because we will ultimately run up against the energy constraints provided by the sunlight hitting the earth's surface. Technology cannot escape those constraints, though it can postpone the day of reckoning.
Though Jensen is right about the ultimate problem, he wrongly sees things changing now. For example, he predicts a violent revolution, leading to a new, localized form of human living within our generation. That's not right. Why not? Jensen is a neo-Malthusian but doesn't consider critiques of original Malthusians, in particular the role of technology. He doesn't consider that a post-industrial civilization might still use technology to increase living standards and carrying capacity. For good or ill, technology will postpone the revolution for a long time.
After the revolution, would small-scale communities living off the land make the world a better place? Think of the small-scale communities in farming and ranching that you may know. Are these the leftists utopias that Jensen would like, or are they deeply conservative places? Be careful what you wish for, Derrick Jensen.
There are various other problems with his overall themes. Jensen romanticizes indigenous peoples, and treats them as an undifferentiated whole, and "Good," while civilized peoples are similarly undifferentiated and "Bad." This doesn't treat indigenous peoples as real people with both virtues and faults, but as cardboard cutouts. Indeed, this romanticization of the indigenous is every bit as racist as the mainstream colonial/imperialist perspective.
Jensen is highly critical of trade because he dislikes globalization. However, he hasn't thought through the issues - - he accepts the notion of a division of labor between writers such as himself and small farmers, artisans, and other people. Presumably these people live by trading things. Even the indigenous peoples whom Jensen so loves traded, often at long distance - - trade between coastal peoples and inland peoples being an obvious example. The logic of this trade is no different at the global level, and by improving efficiency trade can *lower* our impact on the environment. It's possible to argue that trade can be bad for the environment too, but Jensen doesn't want to address these questions with his head, preferring an emotional reaction against excesses of development.
His heart also makes Jensen come across as intolerant, not only of his enemies but of his potential allies. For example, he provides superficial but biting criticisms of Krech's _Myth of the Ecological Indian_ and Mann's _1491_, both of which I've reviewed on Amazon if you're interested. Taken as a whole, these are both *pro*-indigenous books (indeed, I criticized Mann for being a bit too uncritically supportive). Both are politically on the Left, like Jensen. But Jensen dismisses them in offensive terms, apparently because they are not as uncritically pro-indigenous as he is.
Finally, it must be said that, by the end of the book, Jensen comes across as possibly hypocritical. He advocates violence but doesn't put himself on the line. He advocates blowing up dams but doesn't do it himself. In fairness, he's honest about being a coward. He also believes that he can do more good as a writer, and he may be right. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt on this one.
Whew! My overly-long review probably also needs editing, but it reflects the fact that Jensen is nothing if not thought-provoking. I'll give the first volume four stars for the ideas and the writing, and the second volume only three stars because the lack of editing wears the reader down by then. Save a tree and borrow it from the library.
Fits Like a Gun in Your Hand.......2007-02-25
Derrick Jensen is one of those authors that people love or hate. As for myself, I have mixed feelings about the guy and his message. Despite these mixed feelings, though, I never fail to read his books when they come out - and Endgame was by far an away the most anticipated and climactic one yet due to its highly controversial subject: taking down civilization. That's right, taking down civilization.
But why would anyone want to take down civilization, you might ask? At this point, I should say that if you have not already had the pleasure of receiving a formal introduction to the man and his work, you might want to start with one of his earlier publications, such as Listening to the Land, A Language Older Than Words, The Culture of Make Believe, Strangely Like War and Welcome or the Machine. In fact, I would recommend reading them all. They lay the groundwork from which Endgame both springs and builds upon: specifically, that civilization is F-U-B-A-R and doomed to collapse in the near but not too distant future, if not from climate change, then from resource depletion, soil erosion, toxic buildup or any other of the common environmental factors outlined in Jared Diamond's Collapse or the Worldwatch Institute's annual State of the World reports.
Or you might want to just dive right in, since in Volume I of Endgame Jensen outlines many of the fundamental flaws of our cherished civilization. And although each page reads with the power and relevance of an anarcho-primitiveist manifesto, Endgame, the two-volume summation of Jensen's writing career, amounts to nearly 1,000 pages in total - a lot of lumber for a strident call to arms. In fact, under the right circumstances, the book itself is large enough to be used as a blunt instrument to aid the deconstruction of civilization. All jokes aside, though, the net result is a rather awkward flow: a seemingly never-ending concatenation of ideas that, although related by theme, often contradict each other - by the author's own admission:
"Why do you think I laid out the premises explicitly for you, put you in a position of actively choosing to agree or disagree with them? Whey do you think I've approached this form so many directions? Why do you think I've expressed my own fears, expressed my own confusion? Why do you think I've made points, undercut or contradicted them, and then made them again? ... The point is the process I am trying to model. The point is that you puzzle your own way through, and figure out for yourself what, if anything, you need to do." (p 886)
Although I enjoyed the book thoroughly, and often recommend it to friends, Jensen does not come off as being genuine here. By this, I don't mean that he is purposefully deceiving the readers so much as himself. Along with all the interesting environmental science, psychology and poetry the book contains, the underlying current of rage and despair that makes his writing so profound reaches an all time high in Endgame - to the point where he calls upon the reader to "go on the offensive," imploring us to blow up dams, tear up concrete and knock down cell phone towers. Just "don't get sloppy," he advises. "Don't tell anyone who doesn't need to know. Don't get caught" (Dams: Part IV).
Of course, the minute some 16-year-old kid is locked up for taking Jensen's advice and demolishing a dam - or worse - I am sure Jensen will quote something from the 2-page chapter entitled "Responsibility" in his defense - a chapter which, remarkably enough, is little more than an apology for doing such things as blowing up dams to protect your "land base". Or perhaps he will quote one of the many disclaimers ("but don't listen to me, follow your heart") he so sparingly peppers throughout a book predominately dedicated to inspiring illegal activities. Considering the average age of his readership is probably around twenty-four, devoting only two pages to responsibility in a book of this nature is, in my opinion, an abominable abrogation of balance. But, hey, like most geniuses, Jensen is not known for his emotional balance.
All books have weaknesses, just as all authors have weaknesses, and having met Jensen on more than one occasion and sat in on many of his lectures around the country, I am very much aware that the overall importance of his thought far outweighs the single-minded, dam-demolition-obsessed demagogic carelessness of his presentation. In conclusion, I highly recommend that you read this book - but be careful not to leave it lying around where one of your curious, trigger-happy kids might find it unattended. The content is dangerous enough to require parental discretion - which I advise.
Some books you might also want to check out of a similar theme: Green Rage: Radical Environmentalism, Against Civilization, My Name is Chellis and I'm in Recovery from Western Civilization, and Igniting a Revolution.
j.w.k.
Karl Marx, Thomas Paine, Fredrick Douglass, Derrick Jensen-a call for responsibility beyond fear.......2006-07-13
It's a daunting task to begin to distill 908 pages (with very funny footnotes)into an online review. Essentially, I think this work takes its place among other great works that are often recognized and revered from a historical distance. We look at history and say, yes, I would have definetely been part of the Underground Railroad, or the German resistance against the Nazis, or the Zapatistas. But what of now and the crisis that we face? Maybe you can't see the clearcuts or the dying salmon. But maybe you teach in the public schools and see children that are destined for prison. Maybe you know someone that's suffered and died of a rare cancer that didn't exist in your grandparent's time. Maybe it's feeling like a whore for a mortgage company. Or maybe you're finding that all the pharmaceuticals in the world can't make up for the lack of a local community.
Jensen begins with the premise that civilization is destroying the planet and that its very nature is to continue to do so. He is relentless in his analysis and use of sources to prove this. What is also shocking is to be reminded that pacifism as a method of real social change is mostly symbolic. "Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will." (Douglass)
Not only are these two volumes beautifully written and often very humorous, but I believe they are visionary before our time. Our lives are so inundated with messages of corporate compliance and fear of speaking out. But I think these volumes are a necessary call to something beyond ourselves, as members of a certain time in history, and of this planet. Read this book and think about it and think of those who have given themselves for something greater than self preservation.
Warning: these book are very dense,I found it helpful to draw little diagrams so I could keep everything straight.
Landmark work of moral philosophy.......2006-07-07
This seems to be Jensen's ultimate manifesto. It is basically a declaration of war against agricultural and industrial civilization.
But Jensen's point is not only that ultimately humans will have to surrender all their jazzy tech toys (including indoor plumbing) due to inevitable general collapse of industrial civilization, but that we should be glad to surrender them, and we should do so as early as possible to prevent what bit of species extinction we still can. But even more important than any individual "personal lifestyle" type of remediation is to actively fight industrial civilization's more destructive artifacts with explosives.
What's really interesting and surprising about Jensen is his essential optimism! Yes, despite 2,000 pages or so of griping and groaning about how bad it all is, Jensen still seems to think that some small number of humans, living in just the right way (as originally exemplified by North American indigenous peoples) are compatible with the survival of the rest of the biosphere. But I do have to wonder whether humans in the long term are genetically programmed to destroy as much as they can whenever they get the chance. Or at least, some humans will have this tendency, and then the bad will drive out the good - as we have seen with the 500 year European domination of the planet. So I tend to think that long term, humans and the earth biosphere are incompatible. It is a deadend species, and as long as we are building castles in the air, and wishing on a star, I guess I'd throw in my lot more with the Voluntary Human Extinction crowd.
But Jensen would VEHEMENTLY disagree with the above paragraph, and say that any such talk of genetic programming is at best nothing but scientistic gooblygook serving the master power Matrix, and at worst just one more excuse to put off the work that is crying out to be done (blowing up Columbia river dams to restore naturally spawning salmon).
In any case, once you have read this or any other Jensen book, you'll be in the mental grip of his moral absolutism - forever. (Of course, in Jensen's view, you already are in its grip, as you need clean water, don't you?) I don't mean his moral absolutism is necessarily bad or good. I'm still pondering that question. Nor do I mean that you'll necessarily accept his unrelenting assertion that the triumvirate of naturally clean water, freely spawning salmon, and reciprocally sustained landbase trump all other conceivable human values. I mean it literally - in that Jensen poses a moral and practical absolute principle that is so starkly opposed to every other activity, relationship, possession, plan, "hope", or value in your "normal" human life as you conceive it within the existent Matrix of industrial civilization - the Culture of Empire - that you will be unable to mentally reconcile the two. If Jensen is right, your whole "live long and prosper" mindset - as conceived and instantiated within the current paradigm - is flat wrong and must be jettisoned.
Thus you'll need to either accept Jensenism (then prove it by blowing up a dam), or reject it (implicitly rejecting clean water and allying yourself with child rapists), or descend to the intellectual purgatory of pure 24 carat Doublethink - forever. None of your quasi-religious New Age blathering will cut any ice with this guy.
So this book is a carry vector that will infect you with the above mental virus, and once infected you'll never be free of it. The shadow of the dead or never-spawned salmon will dog all the rest of your days on this earth.
Abolitionist-Online.......2006-07-03
Endgame is a book for our time. It is an important contribution to radial environmentalism, direct action and understanding the underlying subterranean currents that transpire to make up western culture as we know it today.
Endgame asks the question and then attempts to solve it: Do you believe that our culture will undergo a voluntary transformation to a sane and sustainable way of living? If the answer is no what then is to be done about it?
Willing or not, ready or not the human species is involved in an all-out, no holds barred war against the dominant culture, western culture. Most people are not competitors, they are the stakes. The spoils, no less, is every living, beating heart and every soul of sentient life upon the planet. The effects of the dominant culture are obvious in every polluted river, the devastation of wildlife, destruction of habitat, the loss of the Coho salmon, dioxin in every mother's breast milk and the habitat of great grizzly bear to name but a few examples from the book. Derrick Jensen wants that turned around. No one can be exempted from the dominant cultures effects. No sector of our lives remains untouched. No sector of any non-humans life remains untouched. Endgame invites us to fight back.
From the standpoint of the traditional left, the vices of contemporary culture - the Machine - what Derrick Jensen uncovers might be all too easily explained away to that old devil capitalism. Another mundane interpretation might centre around the evils stemming from the unrestricted pursuit of profit and the manipulative deceptions of the few profiteers as a major corrupting influence. Endgame isn't like that thankfully.
Sure, Jensen recognises that to ensure the bone and marrow of the dominant cultures value system, the central mechanism must exclusively fixate on human worth and human values exclusively and to achieve this end, indoctrination or "education" from womb to tomb is mandatory. On one hand there must be a constant reinforcement of the dominant cultures ideals with an emphasis on each individuals total dependence on a system that has a death urge and is killing us, the land, the non-human animal kingdom and sentient life all at once.
Endgame's piece de resistance is in exploring this death urge and then finding ways to resist it. The author has gone there before us and saw that mid-wifed by the entrepreneur, the banker, the technocrat, the scientists and ultimately the lawyer of the dominant culture, this sane and sustainable way of living can not, will not, be born from between the printed sheets of pacts and agreements; joint ventures and mergers; contracts and covenants and international treatises signed and countersigned by the political bureaucrat.
Endgame neither lacks cultural resonance or political closure. It engulfs both.
In the Abolitionist's interview with the author, Derrick Jensen notes that even when our best efforts are applied, both eco and animal activists always seem to lose. Although emancipatory promises are possible, they are not being realised by activists around the globe today and the problem is on this battleground, this landscape, the contenders are not prepared to fight the culture itself as a whole. Localised actions, no matter how noble and while still important, do not seek to address the power structures already in place from the dominant culture. The dominant culture itself knows as surely as any lethal cancer that to "win" all you need to do is plughole the power base, the essentials for life such as the utilities, electricity or oil for example, and then what is extraneous to that kind of control is allowed to wither and die or if resisted, is then politically sought out for extermination. In short, western culture's agenda is a ruthless form of materialist monopoly playing itself out.
Jensen's genius is such that he is capable of providing a spiritual dimension to the ecological project. The Machine's lifeblood sets anonymous abstractions like `productivity' and `efficiency' far above human, non-human and planetary needs and it's this the kind of culture Jensen seeks not to reform but to demolish.
Endgame identifies vested interests which survive by controlling the state, the western "productive" apparatus and the institutions of "civilized" life that are by their very nature parasitic and predatory. This in turn plays upon the consciousness of the individual that sets up expectations with strategies of repressive normalization that imposes false needs on individuals. True needs are clean water, air, food and lodgings at some ecologically sustainable level of culture.
The world is on the brink of a human catastrophe of unprecedented proportions and the critical mass, the western intellectuals, along with activists working within the system have fallen prey to malaise and inaction. An unspoken theme running throughout Derrick Jensen's work is how to connect the microcosm with the macrocosm. In this he articulates a type of spirituality that is not transcendent as such, but is based squarely on our connection with the land and defending that same land-base and the ones we love. His work fosters biodiversity, respect and responsibility for the land and for indigenous people. He knows that indigenous peoples demands for rights to their biodiverse environments are direct challenges to the way in which hegemonic political discourse of the Machine and traditional critiques of capitalism are framed today.
Endgame recognises the living force of new ideas or a voluntary transformation to a sane and sustainable way of living incarnated into political culture, as it now stands, is impossible. What Endgame proposes is the antithesis of the dominant cultures political structure and therefore has to be worked at from outside the system.
In fact an influx of living ideas, such as Endgame has produced, into the existing political structure is a direct threat to that structure. Derrick Jensen has said that what he wants is the fall of civilization and he's not kidding. He's not interested in "democratic egalitarianism" or a style of "liberal democracy". He's called for a revolution but who, the next question is asked, has heard the call?
Endgame knows that the dominant culture has no moral base and never did have, as a mooring point for any system of government, because it does not require it for its specific functioning. What currently passes for a moral base is nothing more than pressing needs calling for immediate action that are responded to on a situation by situation basis. Jensen makes a convincing case for its opposite - a relationship that is symbiotic, constant and intimate with the earth, others and living nature.
If not we are left with competing systems and the inexorable paradox of humans deprived of an essential dimension of their being as market forces alone determine the price of what's good and what's valuable.
Nothing short of the rudest shock of ultimate reality - of life and death - will change the mindset. Jensen asks where is our wrath in all of this? Why ask for mercy on a system-the Machine- that shows no mercy? And then he offers us a robust challenge of our time.
Anarchists and existentialists both know that if the dominant culture has made the world confused, ambitious, greedy by seeking power, position and prestige and if the dominant culture is aggressive, brutal, competitive and has built a culture that is equally competitive, brutal and violent then our responsibility lies in understanding ourselves first and then to act dynamically from out of that knowledge source.
The dominant culture is a malignancy that will keep devouring new resources even if that means undermining the very body - nature herself - upon which it depends. How are the specifics of that to be best understood?
Endgame Volume 2 Resistance
Derrick Jensen wondered, "What resistance would look like and what it would accomplish - what the world would look like - if those of us who care about life on the planet leveled the playing field?"
He goes on to say, "What if we said, "In the war you are waging against the world, you will kill some of us, but mark my words, we shall destroy all of this civilization that is destroying the planet"".
I'll bet money on it that the author gets a lot of flak for that statement alone. Destroying civilization?
However, I'll also bet equal money that holocaust survivors and those who are living or have lived in the extreme know exactly what he is talking about. Docile acquiescence and abdication of will and judgment can be found well beyond the concentration camps; they are everyday behaviours. The young rabbinical student who stood at the door to an Auschwitz gas chamber and cried, "We must submit to the inevitable" did nothing shameful. Obviously today however, the radical eco-environmental and animal liberation movement has a choice to make. What side are you on?
This is an exceptional book that is potent enough to change lives and revolutionise within. Essential reading.
Book Description
"Derrick Jensen is a rare and original voice of sanity in a chaotic world. He has wisdom and wit, grace and style, and is a wonderful guide to a good life beautifully lived."-Howard Zinn
The companion piece to Derrick Jensen's immensely popular and highly acclaimed works A Language Older Than Words and The Culture of Make Believe, Endgame stands to become Jensen's most influential book. Building on a series of simple but increasingly provocative premises, Jensen leaves us hoping for what may be inevitable: a return to agrarian communal life via the disintegration of civilization itself.
Customer Reviews:
Well-written essays from the heart, not from the brain.......2007-10-17
I want to like Derrick Jensen, I really do. I like where he's coming from. I'd probably like to be his neighbor. But, oh, are these books frustrating. (I should note that I'm reviewing both books together, which is how they should be reviewed.)
His book jacket describes Jensen as "author, teacher, activist, small farmer, and leading voice of uncompromising dissent, he regularly stirs auditoriums across the country with revolutionary spirit." I'll have more to say about his "uncompromising dissent" and "revolutionary spirit" later on, but just ponder those phrases for a moment. Think too about how much time he has for each of those activities, if he's serious about any of them. This matters here because a lack of editing mars these books.
These books consist of a bunch of essays, though they're presented as something more. After a while, they read like second drafts of what Jensen writes in his daily journal. As you'd expect in a journal, they often revisits themes, adding a new perspective on old themes or tying together two or more themes that were treated separately before. That's all fine, up to a point, but it ultimately becomes repetitive. Repetition is deadly in a book of 891 pages of text, or 929 pages including end matter.
In the end, Jensen needed to rework this material more extensively than he did. He's a brilliant writer, and it's oh-so-easy to let him take you along on a ride. He is passionate about the environment and provides trenchant criticisms of economic development, civilization, and other matters. But the lack of editing means that he doesn't really have a strong argument overall, and in fact he shrunk back from where I thought he was going. Indeed, he never came back to a number of issues that he had promised earlier that he would return to. These issues, unfortunately, are the hard issues that I really wanted him to address.
Another measure of the unnecessary repetition in these volumes is, I think, the fact that there are a lot more Amazon reviews of Volume I than Volume II - - apparently a lot of people don't feel they need to read the second book even if they liked the first one.
What do his essays concern? Well, Jensen is particularly impassioned about dams and salmon runs. Many (most?) dams are completely uneconomic and survive only because of large government subsidies to the businesses that build them and maintain them. Yet these dams destroy rivers and riparian habitats, and have devastated salmon runs in the Pacific Northwest (where Jensen lives).
Jensen is also a strong critic of civilization. He's right that civilization is ultimately unsustainable. Though it's not often recognized, Jensen *has* to be right that economic growth is unsustainable because we will ultimately run up against the energy constraints provided by the sunlight hitting the earth's surface. Technology cannot escape those constraints, though it can postpone the day of reckoning.
Though Jensen is right about the ultimate problem, he wrongly sees things changing now. For example, he predicts a violent revolution, leading to a new, localized form of human living within our generation. That's not right. Why not? Jensen is a neo-Malthusian but doesn't consider critiques of original Malthusians, in particular the role of technology. He doesn't consider that a post-industrial civilization might still use technology to increase living standards and carrying capacity. For good or ill, technology will postpone the revolution for a long time.
After the revolution, would small-scale communities living off the land make the world a better place? Think of the small-scale communities in farming and ranching that you may know. Are these the leftists utopias that Jensen would like, or are they deeply conservative places? Be careful what you wish for, Derrick Jensen.
There are various other problems with his overall themes. Jensen romanticizes indigenous peoples, and treats them as an undifferentiated whole, and "Good," while civilized peoples are similarly undifferentiated and "Bad." This doesn't treat indigenous peoples as real people with both virtues and faults, but as cardboard cutouts. Indeed, this romanticization of the indigenous is every bit as racist as the mainstream colonial/imperialist perspective.
Jensen is highly critical of trade because he dislikes globalization. However, he hasn't thought through the issues - - he accepts the notion of a division of labor between writers such as himself and small farmers, artisans, and other people. Presumably these people live by trading things. Even the indigenous peoples whom Jensen so loves traded, often at long distance - - trade between coastal peoples and inland peoples being an obvious example. The logic of this trade is no different at the global level, and by improving efficiency trade can *lower* our impact on the environment. It's possible to argue that trade can be bad for the environment too, but Jensen doesn't want to address these questions with his head, preferring an emotional reaction against excesses of development.
His heart also makes Jensen come across as intolerant, not only of his enemies but of his potential allies. For example, he provides superficial but biting criticisms of Krech's _Myth of the Ecological Indian_ and Mann's _1491_, both of which I've reviewed on Amazon if you're interested. Taken as a whole, these are both *pro*-indigenous books (indeed, I criticized Mann for being a bit too uncritically supportive). Both are politically on the Left, like Jensen. But Jensen dismisses them in offensive terms, apparently because they are not as uncritically pro-indigenous as he is.
Finally, it must be said that, by the end of the book, Jensen comes across as possibly hypocritical. He advocates violence but doesn't put himself on the line. He advocates blowing up dams but doesn't do it himself. In fairness, he's honest about being a coward. He also believes that he can do more good as a writer, and he may be right. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt on this one.
Whew! My overly-long review probably also needs editing, but it reflects the fact that Jensen is nothing if not thought-provoking. I'll give the first volume four stars for the ideas and the writing, and the second volume only three stars because the lack of editing wears the reader down by then. Save a tree and borrow it from the library.
Thought provoking.......2007-08-09
End Game is a far reaching book with implications for personal praxis taken to a new and (for some) perhaps disturbing level. The questions Jensen raise are profound and his aim is personal transformation at every possible level of human consciousness. This visionary work looks at consequences to human activity and directs our awareness inside asking where we stand, what we stand for, and perhaps most important, what will we do. This book's prescriptions go way beyond the recycle, drive less, live sustainable lives scenario, but takes one utterly to the heart of our modern environmental crisis by asking us to impact contemporary forces inimical to the Earth even if that means breaking, circumventing, or ignoring legal mandates.
How you answer the questions Jensen raise and his prescriptions against the machine of modern living, is perhaps the definitive journey of any life in this moment of his-story. The denial is so widespread and so egregious that action on behalf of the earth is an imperative survival tactic in Jensen's view. Also given the single political party system we have inherited after 911 ought to give us pause for the abdication so prevalent by those we elect, destroying our personal legal rights. The power of the government has risen to alarming proportions without thought to restore - or protect - our individual rights by those we elect to congress; and corporations continue to carry the day over the rights of its citizens.
The book is thought provoking on numerous levels; and it may be one of the most influential books on behalf of the human/earth interface for the case for personal transformation I can think of or recommend. This is something the so called spiritual Pollyanna'a will never get as they bask in their eco la la, everything is love rhetoric ad nausea!
No matter what conclusions you reach after reading this book, I doubt if you will ever be the same again. This is a book for doers and not talkers. Environmentalism is no longer a spectator sport: we need change agents not eco-wannabes! Read everything Derrick writes.
I'm Still Stunned By This Book........2007-08-06
It's been over a year since I finished reading "Endgame" for the second time. Immediately after reading it for the second time I wrote out a two page review to post here, but didn't post it because I didn't think it gave this piece of work the credit it deserves. I don't think any words that I write in a book review can clearly illustrate the impact this book has had on me. The transformation that I'm going through after reading this book is still happening, and will be happening for a long time.
So, out of fear that my words will somehow deter you from not reading one of the most important books written to date, I'm just going to end this review with this: If you have this slight feeling that something is missing in your life, or there is something wrong with the world around you, than give this book a read. I'll guarantee you that you will find out why you feel this way, and there will be no turning back. I'm still stunned after reading "Endgame".
Fits Like a Gun in Your Hand.......2007-02-25
Derrick Jensen is one of those authors that people love or hate. As for myself, I have mixed feelings about the guy and his message. Despite these mixed feelings, though, I never fail to read his books when they come out - and Endgame was by far an away the most anticipated and climactic one yet due to its highly controversial subject: taking down civilization. That's right, taking down civilization.
But why would anyone want to take down civilization, you might ask? At this point, I should say that if you have not already had the pleasure of receiving a formal introduction to the man and his work, you might want to start with one of his earlier publications, such as Listening to the Land, A Language Older Than Words, The Culture of Make Believe, Strangely Like War and Welcome or the Machine. In fact, I would recommend reading them all. They lay the groundwork from which Endgame both springs and builds upon: specifically, that civilization is F-U-B-A-R and doomed to collapse in the near but not too distant future, if not from climate change, then from resource depletion, soil erosion, toxic buildup or any other of the common environmental factors outlined in Jared Diamond's Collapse or the Worldwatch Institute's annual State of the World reports.
Or you might want to just dive right in, since in Volume I of Endgame Jensen outlines many of the fundamental flaws of our cherished civilization. And although each page reads with the power and relevance of an anarcho-primitiveist manifesto, Endgame, the two-volume summation of Jensen's writing career, amounts to nearly 1,000 pages in total - a lot of lumber for a strident call to arms. In fact, under the right circumstances, the book itself is large enough to be used as a blunt instrument to aid the deconstruction of civilization. All jokes aside, though, the net result is a rather awkward flow: a seemingly never-ending concatenation of ideas that, although related by theme, often contradict each other - by the author's own admission:
"Why do you think I laid out the premises explicitly for you, put you in a position of actively choosing to agree or disagree with them? Whey do you think I've approached this form so many directions? Why do you think I've expressed my own fears, expressed my own confusion? Why do you think I've made points, undercut or contradicted them, and then made them again? ... The point is the process I am trying to model. The point is that you puzzle your own way through, and figure out for yourself what, if anything, you need to do." (p 886)
Although I enjoyed the book thoroughly, and often recommend it to friends, Jensen does not come off as being genuine here. By this, I don't mean that he is purposefully deceiving the readers so much as himself. Along with all the interesting environmental science, psychology and poetry the book contains, the underlying current of rage and despair that makes his writing so profound reaches an all time high in Endgame - to the point where he calls upon the reader to "go on the offensive," imploring us to blow up dams, tear up concrete and knock down cell phone towers. Just "don't get sloppy," he advises. "Don't tell anyone who doesn't need to know. Don't get caught" (Dams: Part IV).
Of course, the minute some 16-year-old kid is locked up for taking Jensen's advice and demolishing a dam - or worse - I am sure Jensen will quote something from the 2-page chapter entitled "Responsibility" in his defense - a chapter which, remarkably enough, is little more than an apology for doing such things as blowing up dams to protect your "land base". Or perhaps he will quote one of the many disclaimers ("but don't listen to me, follow your heart") he so sparingly peppers throughout a book predominately dedicated to inspiring illegal activities. Considering the average age of his readership is probably around twenty-four, devoting only two pages to responsibility in a book of this nature is, in my opinion, an abominable abrogation of balance. But, hey, like most geniuses, Jensen is not known for his emotional balance.
All books have weaknesses, just as all authors have weaknesses, and having met Jensen on more than one occasion and sat in on many of his lectures around the country, I am very much aware that the overall importance of his thought far outweighs the single-minded, dam-demolition-obsessed demagogic carelessness of his presentation. In conclusion, I highly recommend that you read this book - but be careful not to leave it lying around where one of your curious, trigger-happy kids might find it unattended. The content is dangerous enough to require parental discretion - which I advise.
Some books you might also want to check out of a similar theme: Green Rage: Radical Environmentalism, Against Civilization, My Name is Chellis and I'm in Recovery from Western Civilization, and Igniting a Revolution.
j.w.k.
Important reading.......2006-12-11
Civilization is killing the planet. I can see you rolling your eyeballs, but wait: what does "civilization" mean? Derrick Jensen defines civilization as (abbreviated): "...a complex of stories, institutions, and artifacts - that both leads to and emerges from the growth of cities,...with cities being defined...as people living more or less permanently in one place in densities high enough to require the routine importation of food and other necessities of life." (Endgame Vol 1, p. 17)
This civilization goes way beyond even food and other necessities. Look around you: just about everything in sight is a human artifact. Where did those artifacts come from? If you start to investigate and realize how many species are wiped out (hundreds of species per day, as opposed to a natural extinction rate of one species every 5 years), how many indigenous people are ousted from their own land (where they were subsisting by growing or gathering food on that land) in order to support our lifestyles (for instance, raising cattle on land that traditionally belonged to the indigenous people of Mexico and sending nearly all of that beef to the US and the UK), you will find out just how bloody our hands are. There's something terribly wrong with this picture and no matter how loud environmentalists yell, no matter how many people start recycling and replacing their lightbulbs with more "environmentally-friendly" ones, it's not looking any rosier.
And think about this: if the previous paragraph took you 2 minutes and 33 seconds to read (you probably read faster than that), one more Rainforest species went extinct - to support our lifestyles.
In Endgame Volume 1: The Problem of Civilization, Derrick Jensen gives case after case showing how the dominant culture is killing the planet. Endgame picks up where the last chapter of his previous work, The Culture of Make Believe, leaves off. In that chapter he dared to speak what few are willing to hear: "...the next step is to get rid of our whole inhumane system, to quit valuing production over life, and to physically stop those who do. The next step is to bring down that which originated in conquest abroad and repression at home. The next step is a planet liberated from the destruction; the next step is the end of civilization." (Culture, p. 602) In Endgame Volume 1 he honestly examines, without flinching, the morality and feasibility of doing just that. He challenges us to get past the belief that what we're doing currently is enough. It's not enough, and we're running out of time. He challenges us to get off our butts and do whatever it takes, and that's not one thing, that's many things. He states over and over that, "We need it all."
People, human and non-human, will defend and fight for who and what they love. If you love this planet, you will read this book and answer the challenge. Civilization is killing the planet. What are you going to do about it? In Endgame Volume 2: Resistance he explores just what that might take.
Book Description
While cultural and scholarly traditions have led us to believe that war and control of nature are separate, there are many more similarities than most people might suspect. Tracing the history of chemical warfare and pest control, Edmund Russell shows how war and control of nature coevolved. Ideologically, institutionally, and technologically, the paths of chemical warfare and pest control intersected repeatedly in the twentieth century. War and Nature helps us to understand the impact of war on nature and vice versa, as well as the development of total war, and the rise of the modern environmental movement. Edmund Russell is an assistant professor in the Division of Technology, Culture, and Communication in the School of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Virginia. This is his first book.
Customer Reviews:
creative synthesis.......2003-05-01
In War and Nature Edmund Russell, Associate Professor of Technology, Culture, and Communication at the University of Virginia, cleverly traces the interaction between chemical warfare and pest control from World War I to the Vietnam War. His central thesis is that war and control of nature have coevolved: "the control of nature expanded the scale of war, and war expanded the scale on which people controlled nature" (p. 2). Following up on his dissertation (University of Michigan, 1993), which won the Rachel Carson Prize from the American Society for Environmental History, Russell culled a wide variety of recently declassified U.S. government documents, business publications, and contemporary books and articles. Russell finds that World Wars I and II and the Cold War forged close ties between military and scientific institutions, and efforts to maintain such links became hallmarks of the post-World War II era. Scientifically and technologically, pest control and chemical warfare each created knowledge and tools that reinforced the other (p. 4) For example, on the eve of World War I, there were few U.S. chemical companies. They manufactured primarily low-profit bulk chemicals. In contrast, Germany had the best chemical factories and schools and had the largest output of sophisticated products. Eight German companies made up almost 80 percent of the world's dyes (p. 18). However, the increased use of mustard and chlorine gas in the war boosted the demand by European allies for these chemicals from the United States. The "Chemical Warfare Service" was created within the U.S. Army to employ civilian chemists to conduct research on war gases. This research also stimulated the invention of new insecticides to deal with such menaces as the boll weevil (attacking cotton crops), house fly (spreading typhus), the San Jose scale (damaging fruit trees), and mosquitoes (spreading malaria).
The use of chemicals in warfare is not new. Interestingly, Russell points out that the first recorded use of poison gas was in 428 BC, when Spartans besieging Plataea attempted to kill its defenders by burning wood soaked in pitch and sulfur under city walls (p. 4). However, chemical warfare increased throughout the twentieth century. According to Russell, at least 90,000 people were killed in World War I by gas, and estimated 350,000 were killed by gas in World War II, not including all the victims in Hitler's gas chambers. Even these figures seem low. Russell skillfully shows through cartoons how federal entomologists and chemists used insects in their propaganda as metaphors for human enemies. One cartoon depicts a conversation between two worms, one of them exclaiming: "What! Me sabotage that guy's victory garden? What do you take me for-a Jap? (p. 100)."
The Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 sought to exclude gas from warfare and define the rights of combatants. Public outrage at the use of chemicals as weapons of war continued to mount. After World War II, the Chemical Warfare Service and other chemical companies lobbied Congress vigorously, stressing the need to develop war gases as insecticides, for which increased funding was required. Noted chemists testified before Congress, claiming also that chemical and biological warfare was "more humane" than conventional warfare. According to Russell, who interviewed several of these chemists, Chief Chemical Officer William Creasy inanely argued in 1958 that 25,000 American casualties on Iwo Jima could have been avoided had the U.S. military employed chemical weapons (p. 208). Miracle "psychochemicals" were promoted, such as LSD-25 that could temporarily incapacitate troops but not permanently harm them. Russell cites a US Army propaganda film produced in 1958 in which a cat chased and caught a mouse, inhaled an unnamed gas, and then cowered from another mouse (p. 208). This publicity campaign persuaded Pentagon authorities to increase the U.S. Army's budget to $80,000,000 for chemical research.
Research to fight insects increased simultaneously with the development of chemicals to fight humans. As thousands of families moved to the suburbs in the 1950s, gardening became a popular hobby and stimulated the desire for pest control. Pesticide manufacturers such as Du Pont and Dow increased their marketing to this group of consumers, while federal crop dusting programs using DDT were initiated.
Russell shows how Rachel Carson's publication of Silent Spring in 1962 galvanized the American environmental movement, leading eventually to the ban on DDT in 1972. This immediate bestseller detailed the noxious effects of DDT on plants and animals and characterized pest control as a self-defeating form of warfare (p. 229).
Reading this book, one is struck by the immense irony of the twentieth century and the causal interaction of peace and war. Never before have so many human lives been saved (thanks to pesticides killing disease-carrying insects and increasing crop yields) and so many destroyed (mostly due to incendiaries, but also chemical weapons). Americans got better at saving lives partly because they got better at taking them, and vice versa. While War and Nature is almost too dazzling in its rich detail and sometimes a bit careless in its logic (e.g. implying that human beings should not be considered part of nature), the book breaks new ground in its connection of two traditionally disparate fields of inquiry, environmental and military history. It should be required reading in college courses in both security studies and environmental science.---Johanna Granville, Ph.D. (Stanford University)
angels and insects.......2002-10-01
World War I was just the beginning of an ongoing cultural and scientific process in which chemical based weapons were created and marketed for use against human and insect enemies. Russell reminds us that the cultural, institutional, and political evolution of twentieth century science and warfare in the United States began not with the J. Robert Oppenheimer and the physicists of Los Alamos but with chemists like James B. Conant and his colleagues at Harvard and American University, emergent corporations like Dupont and the Hooker Company, and government agencies such as the Department of Agriculture and the United States Chemical Warfare Service. With an eye for detail and a witty and readable narrative style, the author assembles scientific papers, declassified governmental and military planning documents, trade journals, and propaganda and advertising literature to reshape our understanding not only of the role of chemistry in warfare, but more importantly the reflexive nature of our understanding and relation to both technology and nature during times of peace.
Book Description
It was April 3, 1974. Crime was soaring. Unemployment and inflation were out of control. A costly war had just come to its demoralizing end, and an unpopular President was on his way out of office. Then, over a sixteen-hour period, nature stepped forward with its own display of mayhem: an unprecedented outbreak of 148 tornadoes, covering thirteen states in the heart of the country, from Michigan to Mississippi. Hundreds of people were killed, thousands of homes demolished, and a billion dollars in losses sustained. Sixty-four of the tornadoes would be classified as severely violent; six belonged to the most rare, most deadly category: F5, or "incredible tornadoes."Like the best nonfiction, F5 is a brilliantly crafted page-turner that reads with the immediacy of a novel, telling a harrowing story of natural disaster against the backdrop of the turbulent 1970s. Acclaimed journalist Mark Levine follows the heart-wrenching fate of a rich cast of intertwined characters -- ordinary Americans whose lives are transformed in a terrifying instant. A pair of teenage lovers are caught while driving on a dark country road; a Vietnam veteran is trapped at home with a newborn baby; a sheriff finds himself in the line of fire twice in rapid succession; a black preacher with a past of dire hardship struggles to protect his family.Other figures enter the story from the broader cultural scene, including Hank Aaron, on his way to challenging baseball's home run record amid racist death threats; Patty Hearst, whose image as kidnapping victim is undergoing a radical shift; Richard Nixon and George Wallace, both intent on using the storms to their political advantage; and a memorably eccentric scientist, known as Mr. Tornado, who regards the "Superoutbreak" as the apotheosis of his scholarly life. Gripping and revelatory, F5 braids the story of the shattering outbreak with images of social upheaval and individual heroism in a stunning, unforgettable read.
Customer Reviews:
Interesting historical account.......2007-09-07
I enjoyed this book despite it being a little slow at times. The author does an excellent job of making you feel you know the characters albeit in a detached, history book sort of way. It takes a while to get to the actual event of the tornado which could easily bore anyone looking for an adventure romp. However, if you are looking for an in-depth, comprehensive account of a major weather event you will enjoy this book. It left me feeling very grateful that we have the current warning systems in place against severe weather.
Dreadful.......2007-09-06
I thought the book was poorly organized and hard to follow, and was more of a political tome than reporting; I was very disppointed. I lived as a young adult during the period when the events in this book took place, but I did not recognize the America that the author described. I thought the book was about tornadoes; I guess the author felt he had to get some things off of his chest. Maybe he does, but I hope next time he works his issues out in private.
A bland disaster?.......2007-08-21
As a fan of disaster stories, I opened this book with anticipation. A natural disaster I had never read about coupled with a noted author...well, my anticipation was better than the actuality. The book is, frankly, bland. Everything about it - the reporting, the prose, the arrangement - is all ok, but that's all it is. OK. I expected a lot more from this combination. And why the author felt it necessary to spend three pages toward the end of the book talking about the streaker at the Academy Awards that year is totally beyond me. However, that is about the ONLY section of the book that truly engaged my emotions.
F5 pairs science with a personal touch lending it appeal.......2007-08-09
F5: DEVASTATION, SURVIVAL AND THE MOST VIOLENT TORNADO OUTBREAK OF THE 20TH CENTURY comes from an award-winning magazine writer and is a powerful survey of the 1974 tornado array - some 148 of them - which struck thirteen states in the Midwest and killed hundreds. F5 reads like fiction but packs in science details on the six that achieved F5 force status - the rarest, largest of tornadoes. By including case history vignettes of individuals affected during the storms, F5 pairs science with a personal touch lending it appeal into general interest lending library holdings, where it's sure to be popular.
Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch
I enjoyed the book.......2007-08-04
I enjoyed this book, and its personal stories of the people involved. As other reviewers said this story does jump around too much. I also found stories about the politics of the time distracting. I would have also like to have seen maps of the area the tornadoes struck. The personal stories of the people involved were well written and I would have like to have heard more. I would recommend this book.
Average customer rating:
- Magnificent book!
- pleasing eye candy and substance
- a very special and threatened place
- Tropical splendor and historical significance.
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Archipelago : Islands of Indonesia
Gavan Daws , and
Marty Fujita
Manufacturer: University of California Press
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Binding: Hardcover
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