Rose George, a journalist, unreels these shocking statistics in lively, unflinching style as she details this enormous problem that is seldom discussed, hidden in a “social straitjacket of denial.” The book is not all gloom and doom. She lays out possible remedies, from the biogas digesters that turn waste into fuel in China to the agricultural use of sludge in the U.S. And she is not without humor, most notably as she investigates the robo toilets of Japan that wash and dry the private parts and even check blood pressure.
Excerpt Earthrise: How Man First Saw The Earth by Robert Poole. Yale University Press, 2008 “This book is about that extraordinary moment in 1968 when humankind first saw the whole Earth, and about everything that flowed into and out of it. It is an alternative history of the space age, written from a viewpoint looking back at the Earth. Confidence in the progress of science and technology was never higher than at the time of the first journeys to the Moon; afterwards came the first ‘Earth Day,’ the crisis of confidence, and the environmentalist renaissance. At the very apex of human progress the question was asked, ‘Where next?’, and the answer came, ‘Home.’ Earthrise was an epiphany in space.”
Note: This article was originally printed with the title, “Reviews”.
