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As the World Burns: 50 Simple Things You Can Do to Stay in Denial
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Average Rating:  out of 15 Reviews
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Price: $14.95
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Sale: $8.25
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Manufacturer: Seven Stories Press
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EAN (European Article Number): 9781583227770
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Number of Items: 1
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Binding: Paperback
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Author: Derrick Jensen
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Publisher: Seven Stories Press
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Dewey Decimal Number: 363.7
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Publication Date: 2007-11-19
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Reading Level: 224
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Description: Two of America's most talented activists team up to deliver a bold and hilarious satire of modern environmental policy in this fully illustrated graphic novel. The US government gives robot machines from space permission to eat the earth in exchange for bricks of gold. A one-eyed bunny rescues his friends from a corporate animal testing laboratory. And two little girls figure out the secret to saving the world from both of its enemies (and it isn't by using energy-efficient light bulbs or biodiesel fuel). As the World Burns will inspire you to do whatever it takes to stop ecocide before it's too late. Derrick Jensen, activist, author, and philosopher, is the author of Endgame, volumes one and two; A Language Older Than Words; and The Culture of Make Believe (a finalist for the 2003 J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize), among other books. Jensen's writing has been described as "breaking and mending the reader's heart" (Publishers Weekly). Activist and artist Stephanie McMillan began syndicating her daring political cartoons in 1999. Since then her work has appeared in dozens of publications and has been exhibited in museums across the country. A book based on her comic strip, Minimum Security, was published in 2005.
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Customer Reviews
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Review Summary: Denial, aliens and bunny bombers... |
Date: 2008-10-19 |
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Details: The story seems simple but has a complex theme. Aliens show up who want to eat the world and, in return, will pay in gold. Of course the government gives in. The plot, in other words, is just a delivery system to tell us the facts. We're losing the planet. Much of what we do, from changing light bulbs to recycling, while good is not good enough. We need a total redesign of our culture, our ways of thinking, and we need to value life more than we value air conditioning and fast food. I'm not sure about using bombs and death rays BUT we do need to change things now. No, I mean right now. Not after YOU'RE dead. Funny enough this book very likely killed a tree but what can you do? |
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Review Summary: Funny yet some truth to it |
Date: 2008-10-06 |
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Details: This is a funny graphic novel about the destruction of Earth because of greed. The solution in this book is violence and some reviewers have been appalled by this theory. What is the answer then? Carbon trading? Buying green products? Planting trees? These solutions do not solve the problem with the world, instead they solve the problem of shame in some people. If this book is a bit cynical for you try reading the Ecology of Commerce by Paul Hawken. I did one star because no one will read the review if I give it a good rating. This is a good, quick read and I definitely recommend this book to a friend. |
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Review Summary: A Hugely Depressing Cartoon |
Date: 2008-08-30 |
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Details: Very depressing. Makes a clear case that corporate fixes for our doomed civilization are so muuch hogwash. You know, the fixes that urge us to buy new light bulbs and others seen on various corporate green ads. Oh, the one where a woman urges us to respect her company because it "keeps us moving" as if that were a great human need in a polluted world under constant onslaught from global warming storms, fires, and droughts.
Should be given to everyone who likes comics instead of non-fiction books. |
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Review Summary: Easily digestible politics for the planet |
Date: 2008-08-27 |
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Details: With this graphic novel, Derrick and Stephanie demolish the absurdities and myths of the environmental movement in a provocative and hilarious fashion. They butt heads directly with the hypocrisies of dogmatic pacifists and green technophiles, much to their chagrin, but to people who love the land with an open mind, this is a great introduction to a depressing but necessary way of where we are, and where we need to go. |
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Review Summary: Good message, crude presentation |
Date: 2008-08-08 |
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Details: I like the spirit and overall message of this little book: that the global climate crisis simply won't be solved by individual consumers turning down their thermostats or rotating their tires. These sorts of strategies, beloved by both liberals and capitalists, do nothing to change the economic and political structures that allow for environmental devastation in the first place, and very little to fix the problem of environmental destruction in the second. What's needed for radical problems are radical solutions.
I get that, and I endorse it. But the way in which Jensen and McMillan have presented the position is so crudely written and drawn that I find this book more embarrassing than enlightening or inspiring.
The plot is simple: because liberal do-gooders are ineffective at stopping environmental destruction (here represented by life-devouring robotic aliens who've bought franchises to the planet from the powers-that-be), nature herself--in the form of animals--fights back. Drastic resistance is the remedy, not getting celebrities to raise funds.
Stephanie McMillan, the artist, uses characters that were born in her political comic strip "Minimum Security." McMillan either has nearly no talent as an artist or she chooses to draw in an irritating faux-primitive style. In either case, her artwork here is even sloppier and unpleasing than in her strip. It looks as if she slapped the stuff out while watching television or clipping her toenails. It's genuinely bad.
To compound the calamity, Jensen's prose is heavy-handed, didactic, and progressively tedious. The bad guys are nothing but evil, in the best silent movie villain style; the naive liberals are laughable in their naivete (although one of them, who throughout the book has mainly played straight man....er, gal, finally gets converted); the good guys are good all the way through. There's no finesse, no suggestion that the people who benefit from an exploitive system might not also be victims in at least some way, no hint that liberal do-gooders might actually do some good. There's just black-and-white, good guy-bad guy thinking throughout.
Look: we do need a revolution. We do need radical change to save the planet. We do need more action and less letter-writing. But we don't need this sorry little book.
One and a half stars.
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