Customer Reviews

Earth Odyssey

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is an excellent book, written in plain English with clear explanations, great examples and vivid depictions of the future we face if we don't get our act together now. Perhaps the most frightening part of the book was the detail of Al Gore who, as an ardent ecologist wrote a book on environmental issues only to throw it all to the wind when he became Vice President of the USA. If he can do this, what hope for the rest of us? I recommend this book to any student, at any level, who wishes to understand the environmental issues we face. However, be warned - this book will depress you! There are no holds barred and you will come away with a feeling of hopelessness.

The author may be correct when he says this book is too ambitious. Regardless, he has, at very least, openned my eyes to the ecological devastation that may be realized sooner rather than later.

Hertsgaard's recount of his travels vary from facinating to horrifying. His description of Russia's ongoing nuclear problems is enough to keep one up at night. Despite this, his objective analysis forces the reader to empathize with those we may be tempted to blame for these crises. Indeed, Hertsgaard's cultural observations alone make this book well worth reading.

I highly recomend this book to anyone. You will be facinated by the author's journey and inspired by his conviction to stop the crisis that has already begun.

There are very few books that I read cover to cover, but this book held my interest to the very end. Hertsgaard has wonderful writing style that transforms dry facts into a narrative story of the people he visited. The information is sobering. Our planet is trouble far beyond what I would have imagined. I have never been an environmental activist, but I think that may soon change. Everyone needs to read this book. We need to stop hiding our heads in the sand and become proactive. This is the only "home" that we have.

The real story of our global environmental crisis that holds one like a great novel. Bravo! Mark Hertsgaard. For your daring, and your insight, and for taking us all on your travels around the world that we might all see what our consumer oblivion is doing to our precious planet earth. This book is a great read, friends. More than a nudge that it's time to wake up - it inspires one to do so, and to tap our neighbor on the head too.

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in learning more about the environment and fate of the earth, as well as those who already consider themselves knowledgeable. It's a rare mix of compelling personal narrative and well-researched analysis which draws the reader in. I was pleasantly surprised at the balance Hertsgaard was able to strike between doomy pessism and blithe pollyana-ish idealism about the state of global ecological affairs.

For the sake of the Earth and all of us, read this book and carry forth its lessons towards a more healthy sustainable future.

It's probably common to think about what happens to the trash we throw away, our human refuse, and other stuff that has to go somewhere, preferably away from where we are. But it's probably less common to think about what happens to refuse from every other process, system, and activity that takes place every second to keep the entire world running. For one thing, such ruminations would be depressing. Once you read about Hertsgaard's sobering journey, you'll be forced to face your own personal contribution to earth's demise. I think cognitive dissonance would be a normal reaction. But perhaps we're lucky that Hertsgaard was willing and able to survey the earth's conditions first hand, and deliver his account with subjective experiences. I think it took a lot of guts for him to approach this subject at all, because it's the kind of message that gets the messenger killed. He did an excellent job of meshing human interest and scientific research and statistics, making the book as valuable as it is interesting. You may not be happy when you finish this book, but you will definitely be informed.

Journalist Mark Hertsgaard sets out on his own to circumnavigate the globe, recording a broad array of environmental woes along the way.

As much as this book focuses on the environmental problems we face, the writing returns again and again to the people that Hertsgaard meets along the way. His characterization of the individuals that he meets are presented in a narrative style that really brings those people to life. We can understand, after reading the book, why the Chinese government has such an abominable record, and the Chinese people make a compelling argument that environmental concerns must come second to financial concerns. The fact that we can see this is a "long walk off a short pier" doesn't change the fact that China is caught between a rock and a hard place.

Hertsgaard presents many human stories that are, in their way, more interesting than the environmental problems he explores. His on-the-ground visit to a polluted river, for example, is almost exactly what I would expect. The river is dirty, the water ugly. But the interpreter who accompanies him on part of his visit to China provides far more surprising, and interesting, reading.

Hertsgaard also ends on a ray of hope, presenting some of the solutions that have yet to gain widespread acceptance, but which demonstrate that a sustainable future is available, should individuals and governments muster the willpower to implement it.

Overall, I was impressed with the writing and the attention to detail that Hertsgaard displays. I'm not sure if every trip that he made paid off, in terms of providing insight via a ground-level look at some of these issues, but overall, he has given us all something to think about.

Investigative reporter Mark Hertsgaard spent six years traveling around the world, gathering material for this book. This is not strictly a scientific treatise (although he conducted extensive research into his topics). Rather, he reports through the eyes of the people who live in the environmentally damaged places he visited. The theme of the book is how technology has both benefitted and harmed the planet and its inhabitants, and how greed continues to threaten our existence. His accounts of wanton destruction of nature in the 19th century make the reader gasp with dismay over the short-sightedness of our predecessors: the damming of a mighty river and its magnificent waterfall; the murder of the largest, oldest sequoia on earth. (Two of the examples which brought me to tears.) The horror is: the destruction, the contamination, and waste are still happening. And not only at the hands of totalitarian regimes or ignorant third-world peasants, but due to the callousness of greedy American corporations and government lobbies. The conclusions of Chapter Three, "The Irrisistable Automobile", will come as no surprise to most American readers, although the images of the perpetually gridlocked traffic-jams of fume-choked Asian cities astonished even this rider of Southern California freeways. Statistics of the predicted explosion in automobile sales world wide are especially ominous. This book was published in 1999 and exposes the hypocrisy of the Clinton administration in paying lip service to environmental issues while simultaneously caving to the demands of the powerful fossil fuel lobby. If Chapter Three is gloomy, Chapter Four, "To the Nuclear Lighthouse", is utterly terrifying. The account of Hertsgaard's visits to the most blighted areas of the former USSR is preceeded by a dismal, just recently uncensored history of the Soviets' worst nuclear disasters. While everyone knows about Chernobyl, few people knew about the radiating of the Siberian region of Chelyabinsk. Few, that is, other than the hapless residents who've been suffering its effects for years. With the aid of his translator, Russian author and photographer Vlad Tamarov, Hertsgaard conducted a relentless expose' of the deliberate coverups of "incidents" at nuke plants and shipping lanes, which irreversibly poisoned crops, fisheries, and even the water table. Even more worrisome than the damage already done are Hertsgaard's reports of poorly inventoried and practically unguarded nuclear stockpiles in volatile republics such as Kazakhstan. The American reader who attributes Soviet environmental crimes to Communist cruelty is in for an ugly shock -- Hertsgaard then documents identical coverups by our own government, of similar "incidents" on our own soil! From Russia, the author journeyed to China and Africa to report on overpopulation and its adverse effects on nature, health, and standards of living. The bleak narrative ends on a hopeful note: "Sustainable Development and the Triumph of Capitalism". Since the publication of "Earth Odyssey", the Bush administration has all but declared war on the environment, so even that fleeting hope now appears elusive.

Having just read Mark Hertsgaard's THE EAGLE'S SHADOW I moved on to his much longer and earlier book EARTH ODYSSEY. Though not intending to read all of this important information in one sitting, I found this book so well written as well as informative that it became a page turner that happily usurped an entire evening. Try to bed down after reviewing the state of the world's environmental crises! Yet in the darkness, having finished the book, there was time to reflect on just how important it is to get this information to the entire public. Not just the active Environmentalists, those who know intuitively the dangers we have bred and are still breeding, but the Everyman out there - all of us who glibly fill our multiple cars with gasoline, clog the freeways, allow the government to ignore Global Warming, remain uninformed about the terrifying diasters associated with the world's nuclear energy programs.

Hertsgaard is a fine journalist and as such he traveled the globe from 1991 - 1997 observing, breathing the noxious air in China, the extreme poverty in Africa, the filth in Russia, India, among the Third World countries, and reporting the complacency echoing in groups who live in this deteriorating world and do very little about taking action to guard our planet's future. Currently the media (such as it is) is alerting us to the presence of an Asteroid a mile wide apparently headed for the earth from outer space. That incident, devastating though it would be, is only a possibility. The more pertinent devastation ( our clamouring for "the better life" through industry and its concomitant wasting of our natural resources by knowingly turning them into poisonous by-products ) seems to go unnoticed. Hertsgaard intermixes reportage with very readable converstaions with people around the world and the result is a book that feels as though it unites all of us, even though that core of unity may be a shared terror.

Had we more writers like Mark Hertsgaard who are brave enough and concerned as deeply about 'Whither mankind' perhaps our newspapers and magazines and television/radio news shows would feel compelled to report the important issues before us today rather than search for the latest movie star wedding or sex scandal or whatever sells commercial space. Take this journey with Hertsgaard and wake up to a morning of commitment to the guardianship of our fellowmen.

This account of our creeping environmental crises ranging from the Sudan to Russia, China and Brazil, and the U.S., is made all the more convincing by the author's calm, almost dispassionate, reportorial style. I'm not hopeful though that it will make a bit of difference because we really are like that proverbial frog in a slowly boiling kettle who is cooked before he realizes it. Maybe, someone, will pull a technical rabbit out of the hat and save our descendents? May they forgive us.