Dr. Bob Rich Calls New Salk Book "Inspirational."

Title: A New Reality

Authors: Jonas and Jonathan Salk

Publisher: City Point Press (June 26, 2018)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 1947951041

ISBN-13: 9782947951044

Purchase on Amazon and Barnes and Noble

Reviewed by Dr. Bob Rich

This is an important and though-provoking book. It sets out a rationale for the kind of life I have advocated for during the past 45 years: cooperative; in dynamic, sustainable balance with the environment; seeking win-win solutions through consensus; valuing wellbeing.

I think the concepts of A New Reality need to be understood by the decision-makers of our times, including politicians and the heads of large corporations.

A particularly valuable aspect is that our current world of conflict is explained. We need to understand it in order to transform society.

At the same time, I find it to be completely unrealistic. Like almost all projections from the past to the future, it fails to take into account the fact that we are past the tipping point. The actions that lead to catastrophe are in our past, and we are seeing their consequences unfold, right now.

Current estimates of extinction rates are 1000 times the “background rate.” If Salk and Salk are right and there is a distant future for humanity, their archeologists will probably consider us to be the plasticoferous era. We live on Poison Planet, which is driving a wide range of illnesses, and increases death and suffering.

I wish I could share the authors’ hope. I read the book wishing they could convince me. But certainly while the rulers of humanity are those most to gain from using the rules of the past, there will be great difficulty in transitioning to the rules necessary to have a future.

However, I return to the start. This is a wonderful book, inspirational, simple and logical. It should be necessary reading for everyone.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Dr. Bob Rich has studied futurology (predictions based on current trends) since 1972. He started because he had young children at the time, and wanted to see the world waiting for them. The results were horrifying: he predicted today’s world. If you are interested about out future, check out his blog, Bobbing Around https://bobrich18.wordpress.com. Follow him on Twitter @bobswriting. His mottoes are "Commit random acts of kindness" and "live simply so you may simply live." 

MORE ABOUT THIS BLOG AND GETTING REVIEWS

 The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. Of particular interest to readers of this blog is her most recent How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically (http://bit.ly/GreatBkReviews ) that covers 325 jam-packed pages covering everithing from Amazon vine to writing reviews for profit and promotion. Reviewers will have a special interest in the chapter on how to make reviewing pay, either as way to market their own books or as a career path--ethically!

This blog is a free service offered to those who want to encourage the reading of books they love. That includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews, reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure, and readers who want to shout out praise of books they've read. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page. Reviews and essays are indexed by genre, reviewer names, and review sites. Writers will find the search engine handy for gleaning the names of small publishers. Find other writer-related blogs at Sharing with Writers and The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor.

Sarah Dillard Has TWO Mouse Scouts Books!

Mouse Scout Series
Including Mouse Scouts and Mouse Scouts Make a Difference

By Sarah Dillard

Hardcover Paper Books

ISBN: 978-0-385-756-3-7 and 978-0-385-75599-3

Published by Knopf

Fiction – Children

                                Lessons in Creativity and Doing Good!

Mouse Scouts Ideal Annual Gift for Kids

Reviewed by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, columnist and reviewer for MyShelf.Com and author of multi award-winning fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry,
and the HowToDoIt Series of books for writers

If you are not a grade school teacher, you may not have thought of using trash as a teaching tool. If you are not an artist with a penchant for collage or sculpture (or your name isn’t Bill Nye the Science Guy), you may not have thought about turning castoff straws into musical instruments, siphons, or hoses.

Violet, Tigerlily, and their scouting pals from Sarah Dillard’s Mouse Scouts are back in Mouse Scouts Make a Difference to help parents, kids, and teachers with fun new ideas for ways to make a difference in the world.

This second little book includes ideas for repurposing bottle caps, fast-food containers, water bottles, old mouse pads from Mom’s computer, and—if you’re a mouse—mousetraps used as rowing machines!

This is makes a lovely giftbook for children with parents who want their children to think creatively, compassionately, and universally.  It is also a book that may encourage parents and children everywhere to take scouting more seriously. In fact, make the two of them the beginnings of a Mouse Scouts library.

MORE ABOUT THE  REVIEWER

Carolyn Howard-Johnson is a mother, grandmother and former teacher.  She is the author of multi award-winning fiction and poetry and the HowToDoItFrugally Series of books—one series for writers and one for retailers. Learn more at http://HowToDoItFrugally.com or tweet with her @FrugalBookPromo

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The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. It is a free service offered to those who want to encourage the reading of books they love. That includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews, reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure, and readers who want to shout out praise of books they've read. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page. Reviews and essays are indexed by genre, reviewer names, and review sites. Writers will find the search engine handy for gleaning the names of small publishers. Find other writer-related blogs at Sharing with Writers and The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor.

Title: EGYPT, ENERGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT: CRITICAL SUSTAINABILITY PERSPECTIVES
Category: Nonfiction / Environment
Author: Tarek Selim
Adonis & Abbey Publishers Ltd., London
Publication date: July 2009
ISBN (hardcover): 978-1906704506
ISBN (paperback): 978-1906704513



Pure environmentalism and pure resource exploitation can be integrated together to form an encompassing sustainability solution. This is the main message of this book based on an innovative “structure-concentration-incentives” methodology applied to Egypt. This methodology provides a basis for achieving environmental sustainability based on endogenous source-driven forces of change in contrast to the traditional effects-dominant oriented approach. Though the book’s methodology could be used as a framework of analysis in environmental sustainability research for any developing country, Egypt provides a rich case study because of its historical, socio-economic, and political constructs.

Sustainable development is generally seen as a tradeoff between resource efficiency and social equity such that total resource essentials in society can become sustainable in the long run in a manner that meets the needs of current generations without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Environmental sustainability cannot be implemented without the direct inclusion of structure (form), concentration (effect), and incentives (drivers) as critical policy choices because: (1) they constitute a necessary condition in any country’s path towards sustainable development, (2) they must be implemented simultaneously as a target and constraint, and (3) they require social and political sacrifice complemented by endogenous-based systems in contrast to authoritarian solutions.

Egypt, Energy and the Environment presents research on Egypt’s energy and environmental resources from multidisciplinary perspectives. It offers sustainability solutions to many of the country’s problems relating to energy, pollution, water, gender, wildlife, politics, economics, management, ecology, and information technology. The book’s method of analysis can be applied to other developing countries as well.

Author info:
Tarek H. Selim is Associate Professor of Economics at the American University in Cairo and Faculty Affiliate to Harvard Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness. He has published extensively in leading international journals and presented papers in many conferences. His research output includes more than fifty research articles and book reviews, and he won his school’s research excellence award in 2006. Professor Selim has PhD in economics from George Washington University, MBA from Johns Hopkins, and holds professional certificate programs from MIT, Harvard, Georgetown, Oxford, and Imperial College.

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The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. It is a free service offered to those who want to encourage the reading of books they love. That includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews, reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure, and readers who want to shout out praise of books they've loved. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page. Reviews and essays are indexed by author names, reviewer names, and review sites. Writers will find the index handy for gleaning the names of small publishers. Find other writer-related blogs at Sharing with Writers and The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor.
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Stewart L. Utdall Pens Book on Environment

Title: The Quiet Crisis
Author: Stewart L. Udall
Categories: Environmentalism, Nonfiction
ISBN:B0011UH0S8

Reviewed by Taylor Smith

To my way of thinking one of the greatest tragedies of modern American politics has been the increasing polarization on a wide range of issues which focuses more on who is right rather than what is right and in the public interest. Nowhere is this truer than in the realm of environmental policies. We endlessly debate issues which have grave importance for the future only paying heed to the demagogy of the left or right and ignore the true moral, historical and scientific issues at hand.

The author of this book is Stewart L. Udall, a distant cousin a couple times removed from me on my father’s side. He was a Democrat (I know! I have relatives who are donkeys!), and JFK’s Secretary of the Interior. This book has had a profound impact on the way that many Americans think and feel about the environment. For this reason I am writing a review of it by itself rather than with a companion book like usual for my blog. I think it is important enough that it needs to be considered on its own.

The book chronicles the history of the United States from the perspective of the land. The first period is the era of contact between Native Americans and the European settlers and the contrast between their respective views of the land. To the Natives the land was something owned by everybody in the same way as the ocean, air, sky and stars were the property of no single individual. To the Europeans, however, land ownership was the entire basis of their society and, for the English especially, the entire reason for their being in America.

This land ownership, however, was fundamentally at odds with the Native concept (and indeed the older medieval concept of land ownership in Europe) which stressed the claim of future generations on the land and allowed for the use, but not abuse, of the resources available from the land. I could elaborate on the late medieval/early modern shift in concepts about ownership, but I will spare all of you this lesson for now!

This new concept of land ownership was coupled with a new idea arising from the sheer size and overwhelming wildness of the American continent which Udall calls the “myth of superabundance.” In short the idea is that there are so many buffalo, beaver and deer, so much fertile soil and forests and so many mineral deposits that conserving them was counterproductive and uncompetitive. The final critical element added to this mix was the rugged individualism which helped to create the essential elements of American democracy but also contributed to a lack of civic mindedness among some classes. Thus the few who made massive fortunes at the public expense were often seen as good examples rather than the pillagers of the future that they were.

Gradually some people began to see that this system was unsustainable and ethically lacking. Diverse characters like Davie Crockett, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Daniel Boone, and other began to see the effect on the land that our unthinking policies were having. Eventually as we began to have massive extinctions on our own soil (there were more than five billion passenger pigeons in the United States at the beginning of the nineteenth century, but shortly before the start of the twentieth century the last surviving member of the species died in a zoo in Ohio), and people like Audubon and other conservationists and scientists began to take action. Eventually people like Teddy Roosevelt were able to make political gains in breaking up the Iron Triangles (a political science term for the relationship between business, regulation agencies and congressional committees which all deal with a particular subject and often scratch each others backs) which had allowed so much of this legal pillaging to happen.

Now as a country we have made a good start, but there is still a lot to do. The balance between using resources and preserving land is a delicate one (one person quoted in the book says that the boundaries between the workshop and the temple of nature is inevitably going to be a contentious issue) and has not been fully resolved. However the scientists, politicians, farmers, hunters, activist, philanthropists, and voters of the last century have done some wonderful things to try and help preserve for us large areas of wilderness.

Now we have challenges involving overcrowding, littering, pollution, and a lack of planning- all brought on because we still lack a sense of reverence for nature and our environment. As the author put it:

"The quiet crisis demands a rethinking of land attitudes, deeper involvement by leaders of business and government, and methods of making conservation decisions which put a premium on foresight. With the acumen of our scientists we can achieve optimum development of resources that will let us pluck the fruits of science without harming the tree of life. Once we decide that our surroundings need not always be subordinated to payrolls and profits based on short-term considerations, there is hope that we can both reap the bounty of the land and preserve an inspiriting environment."

I wish that we would all take a step back and reevaluate our opinions and activities in light of an increased respect for the earth and for the future generations that are going to inherit it. Maybe this is all a little too utopian and impractical, but if we are only thinking about here and now how can we claim to be any better than the people who came before us? It is easy to be critical of the slaughter of the buffalo as a short-sighted policy, but are we any better? I’ll let you decide that for yourself.
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The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. It is a free service offered to those who want to encourage the reading of books they love. That includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews, reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure, and readers who want to shout out praise of books they've loved. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page. Reviews and essays are indexed by author names, reviewer names, and review sites. Writers will find the index handy for gleaning the names of small publishers. Find other writer-related blogs at Sharing with Writers and The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor.