An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It [Paperback]

Al Gore (Author)

Book Description

Release date: May 26, 2006

An Inconvenient Truth--Gore's groundbreaking, battle cry of a follow-up to the bestselling Earth in the Balance--is being published to tie in with a documentary film of the same name. Both the book and film were inspired by a series of multimedia presentations on global warming that Gore created and delivers to groups around the world. With this book, Gore, who is one of our environmental heroes--and a leading expert--brings together leading-edge research from top scientists around the world; photographs, charts, and other illustrations; and personal anecdotes and observations to document the fast pace and wide scope of global warming. He presents, with alarming clarity and conclusiveness--and with humor, too--that the fact of global warming is not in question and that its consequences for the world we live in will be disastrous if left unchecked. This riveting new book--written in an accessible, entertaining style--will open the eyes of even the most skeptical.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The much-discussed and highly regarded 2006 book and film by Gore arrives on audio two years later. While the material and central focus on global warming is clearly the most important aspect of the book, Beau Bridges is the only truly captivating reader here. Cynthia Nixon and Blair Underwood tend to drone on in monotone voices that take some of the impact out of Gore's findings. Bridges, however, reads with a stern and commanding tone that grips readers from the very start, never failing to relate the information with sheer honesty and true grit. As a whole, the audio is still as important and poignant as the original, and though certain aspects have been left out, the listener is still met with the same urgency to act. A Rodale paperback.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

Review

'A user-friendly introduction to global warming... lucid, harrowing and bluntly effective' Michiko Kakutani, NEW YORK TIMES '...this frightening, galvanizing book will convince plenty of readers that Earth genuinely does hang in the balance...' Warren Bass, WASHINGTON POST 'Gore the activist is an earnest, passionate, funny and caring individual, determined to communicate with people about the most important issue facing our earth' HollywoodReporter.com --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 328 pages
• Publisher: Rodale Books; Second Edition edition (May 26, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594865671
• ISBN-13: 978-1594865671
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (342 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #174,758 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Former Vice President Al Gore is co-founder and chairman of Generation Investment Management. He is also a senior partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and a member of Apple, Inc.'s board of directors.

Gore spends the majority of his time as chairman of The Climate Reality Project, a non-profit devoted to solving the Climate Crisis.

Gore was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1976, 1978, 1980 and 1982 and the U.S. Senate in 1984 and 1990. He was inaugurated as the forty-fifth Vice President of the United States on January 20, 1993, and served eight years. During the Administration, Gore was a central member of President Clinton's economic team. He served as President of the Senate, a Cabinet member, a member of the National Security Council and as the leader of a wide range of Administration initiatives.

He is the author of the bestsellers Earth in the Balance, An Inconvenient Truth, The Assault on Reason, and Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis. He is the subject of an Oscar-winning documentary and is the co-recipient, with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for "informing the world of the dangers posed by climate change."

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

128 of 155 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The Factual Evidence is Devastating June 1, 2006

By True Hawk Patriot

Format:Paperback

OK, I'm a lifelong Republican. And for the longest time I resisted the 'global warming' stuff as "hogwash" as Rush says. But for the first time, the actual facts in this book changed my mind. I'm somewhat embarrassed by the overwhelming evidence submitted by Gore, but hey, when you're right, you're right. Congratulations, you've got to hand it to someone who sticks with an issue until the truth comes out.

60 of 74 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Best Climate Change Starter Book Yet June 27, 2006

By Robert Derenthal

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I am a layman who loves to read books about science. To me politics has no business mucking around in science. I simply want to know what research is being done in a field, and what the general scientific consensus is about a given topic.

Al Gore's book is an excellent starting point for those who want to learn some of the basics of global warming, but are reluctant to leap into a more academic book on the subject. Although I have read several books on this topic I was interested to see what Al Gore had to say about it. When I got my copy my first reaction was "Oh no, this is just a simple minded picture book." I was mistaken. Pictures are worth a thousand words. We are presented with photos of glaciers taken now, and in the past. The change is startling. Or the satellite photos of Lake Chad, which used to be the size of Lake Erie, but has almost totally dried up in just 40 years.. He tells us about those cute penguins we saw in the movie "March of the Penguins": 70% of them are now gone. They can't find enough hard ice to raise their offspring. The statistics he presents in many graphs are quite frightening. Sample: in the 1950s there were about 10 floods in the U.S.; In the 1990s there were close to 200.

Some readers who want to learn about global warming, but who are not fans of Mr. Gore might tire of the several biographical segments added to the book. Whatever your feelings are about him, you have to admire the amount of traveling he did to seek out answers. He's gone through all the continents - traveled up the Amazon, been to both Antarctica and the North Pole (both on top of it, and under it in a submarine).

Mind you, this book will not take you a long distance into the topic. It is an introduction, and if the material presented intrigues you, then you should take the next step and read some more books on the subject such as:

The Discovery of Global Warming by Spencer Weart (a history of global warming research)

Field Notes from a Catastrophe by Elizabeth Kolbert (easy reading)

Red Sky At Morning by James Speth (how do we address the problem)

Is The Temperature Rising, by George Philander (a little more technical)

The Weather Makers by Tim Flannery (easy reading)

Climate Change by William Burroughs (quite technical)

The Ice Chronicles by Paul Mayewski (about the ice cores that tell us about past climate)

High Tide by Mark Lynas (how global warming is already affecting people)

The Long Summer by Brian Fagan (climate change through the history of civilization)

Atmosphere, Climate and Change by Thomas Graedel (somewhat technical but accessible)

98 of 123 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Pay attention to who attacks this book June 29, 2006

By J. Callahan

Format:Paperback

If you read the customer reviews of this book closely, you'll notice two things:

1. The majority of the one and two star reviews are written by people who apparently haven't read the book or seen the movie and are just using this space to promote their own, or somebody else's, book.

2. These same people, many of whom describe An Inconvenient Truth as "political propaganda," are also overwhelmingly promoting a right wing political agenda that has NOTHING to do with mainsteam science.

As both the book and the movie point out in careful detail, over 900 peer-reviewed, independent, international scientific studies have all reached the same conclusion: Global warming is real, it is being exacerbated by the burning of fossil fuels, and it constitutes a clear and present danger to human health and safety and the global economy.

It's time for America to stop shirking its responsibility as the dominant superpower in the face of a global climate crisis. We need more leaders like the former vice president with the guts to challenge American business and technology to come up with job-creating innovations that will help reduce CO2 emissions so our children can inherit a planet that is as habitable as the one we were born to.

Let's show the world America hasn't lost its can-do spirit!