|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||
Frequently Bought Together
Product Details
|
Product Description
Review
Praise for Chris Turner and Planet Simpson:
“One of this country’s smartest and most original pop-culture commentators.”
—Hour (Montreal)
“[An] absolutely must-have tome for the many Simpsons freaks, not just an over-sized fan’s guide but an absorbing take on why it matters.”
—Toronto Star
“Turner has written the definitive Simpsons study. He shows both a lightness of touch suitable to his subject and the intellectual rigour to grasp its vast purview.”
—The Gazette (Montreal)
“[A] brilliant critique of western culture from the mid-90s to the present. . . . Turner understands pop culture in a way few others of his generation have been able to articulate thus far.”
—The Record (Kitchener-Waterloo)
“Smart and funny, Turner is clearly one of the converted, and he writes with fitting enthusiasm for his subject while working in seemly references to cultural theory and TV-insider politics.”
—The Hollywood Reporter
“One of the more fascinating and entertaining works I’ve read.”
—The Globe and Mail
“A broad-minded analysis that connects the television show to some of the most pressing issues in contemporary life.”
—Alberta Views
From the Hardcover edition.
“One of this country’s smartest and most original pop-culture commentators.”
—Hour (Montreal)
“[An] absolutely must-have tome for the many Simpsons freaks, not just an over-sized fan’s guide but an absorbing take on why it matters.”
—Toronto Star
“Turner has written the definitive Simpsons study. He shows both a lightness of touch suitable to his subject and the intellectual rigour to grasp its vast purview.”
—The Gazette (Montreal)
“[A] brilliant critique of western culture from the mid-90s to the present. . . . Turner understands pop culture in a way few others of his generation have been able to articulate thus far.”
—The Record (Kitchener-Waterloo)
“Smart and funny, Turner is clearly one of the converted, and he writes with fitting enthusiasm for his subject while working in seemly references to cultural theory and TV-insider politics.”
—The Hollywood Reporter
“One of the more fascinating and entertaining works I’ve read.”
—The Globe and Mail
“A broad-minded analysis that connects the television show to some of the most pressing issues in contemporary life.”
—Alberta Views
From the Hardcover edition.
Product Description
After the fierce warnings and grim predictions of The Weather Makers and An Inconvenient Truth, acclaimed journalist and national bestselling author Chris Turner finds hope in the search for a sustainable future.
Point of no return: The chilling phrase has become the ubiquitous mantra of ecological doomsayers, a troubling headline above stories of melting permafrost and receding ice caps, visions of catastrophe and fears of a problem with no solution. Daring to step beyond the rhetoric of panic and despair, The Geography of Hope points to the bright light at the end of this very dark tunnel.
With a mix of front-line reporting, analysis and passionate argument, Chris Turner pieces together the glimmers of optimism amid the gloom and the solutions already at work around the world, from Canada’s largest wind farm to Asia’s greenest building and Europe’s most eco-friendly communities. But The Geography of Hope goes far beyond mere technology. Turner seeks out the next generation of political, economic, social and spiritual institutions that could provide the global foundations for a sustainable future–from the green hills of northern Thailand to the parliament houses of Scandinavia, from the villages of southern India, where microcredit finance has remade the social fabric, to America’s most forward-thinking think tanks.
In this compelling first-person exploration, punctuated by the wonder and angst of a writer discovering the world’s beacons of possibility, Chris Turner pieces together a dazzling map of the disparate landmarks in a geography of hope.
While most of the world has been spinning in stagnant circles of recrimination and debate on the subject of climate change, paralyzed by visions of apocalypse both natural (if nothing of our way of life changes) and economic (if too much does), Denmark has simply marched off with steadfast resolve into the sustainable future, reaching the zenith of its pioneering trek on the island of Samsø. And so if there’s an encircled star on this patchwork map indicating hope’s modest capital, then it should be properly placed on this island. Perhaps, for the sake of precision, at the geographic centre of Jørgen Tranberg’s dairy farm.
There are, I’m sure, any number of images called to mind by talk of ecological revolution and renewable energy and sustainable living, but I’m pretty certain they don’t generally include a hearty fiftysomething Dane in rubber boots spotted with mud and cow shit. Which is why Samsø’s transformation is not just revolutionary but inspiring, not just a huge change but a tantalizingly attainable one. And it was a change that seemed at its most workaday–near-effortless, no more remarkable than the cool October wind gusting across the island–down on Tranberg’s farm.
—from The Geography of Hope
From the Hardcover edition.
Point of no return: The chilling phrase has become the ubiquitous mantra of ecological doomsayers, a troubling headline above stories of melting permafrost and receding ice caps, visions of catastrophe and fears of a problem with no solution. Daring to step beyond the rhetoric of panic and despair, The Geography of Hope points to the bright light at the end of this very dark tunnel.
With a mix of front-line reporting, analysis and passionate argument, Chris Turner pieces together the glimmers of optimism amid the gloom and the solutions already at work around the world, from Canada’s largest wind farm to Asia’s greenest building and Europe’s most eco-friendly communities. But The Geography of Hope goes far beyond mere technology. Turner seeks out the next generation of political, economic, social and spiritual institutions that could provide the global foundations for a sustainable future–from the green hills of northern Thailand to the parliament houses of Scandinavia, from the villages of southern India, where microcredit finance has remade the social fabric, to America’s most forward-thinking think tanks.
In this compelling first-person exploration, punctuated by the wonder and angst of a writer discovering the world’s beacons of possibility, Chris Turner pieces together a dazzling map of the disparate landmarks in a geography of hope.
While most of the world has been spinning in stagnant circles of recrimination and debate on the subject of climate change, paralyzed by visions of apocalypse both natural (if nothing of our way of life changes) and economic (if too much does), Denmark has simply marched off with steadfast resolve into the sustainable future, reaching the zenith of its pioneering trek on the island of Samsø. And so if there’s an encircled star on this patchwork map indicating hope’s modest capital, then it should be properly placed on this island. Perhaps, for the sake of precision, at the geographic centre of Jørgen Tranberg’s dairy farm.
There are, I’m sure, any number of images called to mind by talk of ecological revolution and renewable energy and sustainable living, but I’m pretty certain they don’t generally include a hearty fiftysomething Dane in rubber boots spotted with mud and cow shit. Which is why Samsø’s transformation is not just revolutionary but inspiring, not just a huge change but a tantalizingly attainable one. And it was a change that seemed at its most workaday–near-effortless, no more remarkable than the cool October wind gusting across the island–down on Tranberg’s farm.
—from The Geography of Hope
From the Hardcover edition.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most helpful customer reviews
23 of 23 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Book We Need,
By Mrs Hilksom (Calgary, AB) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Geography of Hope: A Tour of the World We Need (Hardcover)
I'll let the Globe & Mail review say it all:Published in the Books section, October 6, 2007 THE GEOGRAPHY OF HOPE A Tour of the World We Need By Chris Turner Random House Canada, 480 pages A year of living optimistically Review by EVAN OSENTON Bad news might sell books and turn science authors into global celebrities, but it isn't particularly good at changing minds, motivating people or inspiring hope. It certainly isn't convincing our species to give up our game of ecological Russian roulette. Chris Turner would know: In the mid-1990s, he took a summer job for Greenpeace as a door-to-door canvasser in Kingston, Ont. His specialty - indeed, he notes, most environmental groups' specialties then and now - was bad news. Doom. Gloom. Lurid descriptions of bleached coral and starving polar bears, cracked hardpan and skyrocketing asthma rates, rivers of glowing Chinese factory effluent and mutilated seal pups. On one doorstep, Turner recalls a seven-year-old girl "so consumed with worry over the planet's health, [her parents] told me, that sometimes it made her stomach ache too much to eat." Mostly, Turner remembers people's weary indifference to his spiel. Fast-forward a decade. Chris Turner is a writer of national renown, fresh off his bestselling, lushly enthusiastic Planet Simpson (quite possibly the most comprehensive book published on the most important pop-cultural phenomenon of the past 20 years). Turner never quite stopped believing the bad news, but, like so many of us, he'd become overwhelmed and moved on. And then his wife gave birth to a baby girl. In a moment of awful clarity (fittingly, while on a hill overlooking the oil-company spires of downtown Calgary), the bad news came back, ringing truer and more urgently than ever. "It makes me positively ache in places I didn't know I had until [my daughter] was born that I can't make her any promises," Turner writes. "I can't even tell her with any confidence that there is a future with sufficient durability to serve as a drawing board for her lifelong dreams. There's a legitimate possibility that she'll face calamity on a scale I can't imagine, on a scale beyond anything humanity's ever seen. This is a prospect that makes it hard to think, makes my vision cross with angry, impotent tears. It terrifies me." Turner realized he couldn't return to doom and gloom; he owed his daughter far better. And so of his terror and ache and love was born The Geography of Hope. For one year, Turner and family criss-crossed the globe in search of people living sustainably; people living or building, in the words of Small is Beautiful author E. F. Schumacher, "a lifestyle designed for permanence." Turner decided he needed to find eco-pioneers and assess their ideas, however strange, unexpected or heretical to the modern economic order. He needed reassurance that his little girl had a future, that she needn't endure Armageddon or de-evolve. Indeed, Turner wasn't interested in promising his daughter "traditional" sustainability, a future of animal skins, foraged roots and yurts. His criterion: "Would this - this place, this machine, this social system or way of life - be capable of continuing on its present course for the foreseeable future without exhausting the planet's ability to sustain human life at something like the current population and quality of life?" So off Turner went to Samsų, a remarkable Danish island completely free of fossil-fuel dependency, part of a country that could be totally powered by renewables within a generation, and whose ease of transition is truly inspiring. Turner visited Germany, where it turns out sustainable housing comes with no great discomfort or cost, and where investors in solar energy - whether altruistic or seeking riches - are realizing giddy returns. He saw exponential growth in Indian micro-scale solar, witnessed Muhammad Yunus's micro-credit banking revolution in action, and confronted the argument that India and China will necessarily repeat all of North America's mistakes (and negate all of our hypothetical environmental progress). Off to Southeast Asia, to tank up at a hydrogen "filling station," witness mountains of cassava waste reclaimed as biofuel and help rural Thais and displaced Burmese generate run-of-river hydroelectricity. Hope abounds, it seems, even in decadent North America: in Seaside, Fla., and suburban Denver's bold expression of New Urbanism; in Taos, N.M.'s revolution in intuitive architecture; in the form of Interface, one of the world's largest carpet manufacturers and the first fully sustainable multinational corporation. Turner even found hope near home, in Alberta's Drake Landing, North America's first solar-powered subdivision, and in the massive wind turbines spreading across southern Alberta's foothills like so many snow-white pinwheels. The author's visit to energy activist Amory Lovins's Rocky Mountain Institute alone could have inspired a thick volume. Currently working with Wal-Mart to bring massive improvements in efficiency to their truck fleets, and with the U.S. military to integrate lightweight carbon fibre into (now hyper-inefficient) military vehicles, Lovins, co-founder of RMI, is perhaps Turner's best evidence that a hopeful future isn't the exclusive dream (or right) of any one group, and that a sustainable future will only work once we engage literally everyone in solution-making. Chris Turner does his daughter proud. The Geography of Hope makes an overwhelming case for an abundant, even limitless amount of hope for humanity. The book is a captivating travelogue, the writing marked by piquant observations and raw, emotional engagement with farmers, radicals, business people, activists and indigenous people the world over. And Turner should find a broad audience; his stories are full of references to his love of driving, cold beer, the Big Lebowski and The Simpsons. The Geography of Hope might stimulate an interest in sustainability among readers who otherwise fear "environmental books." At any rate, Turner has helped push us ever closer to Malcolm Gladwell's tipping point, after which sustainable living should, once again, become second nature to our species. Without naming names, Turner mentions thick volumes of environmental doom and gloom he read in researching his book in which "the vivid horror, not the dim hope stuck" (we all have a favourite culprit). The Geography of Hope merely aspires to be Turner's "scrapbook from a year spent living optimistically." Doom and gloom's insights, eloquence and terrible truths aside, I know from which set of stories I'd rather my children assembled a vision of their future. Evan Osenton is the books editor at Alberta Views magazine and a former honour student in the have-I-got-some-terrible-news-for-you school of persuasion.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
At last, an environmental book that doesn't make me despair,
By
This review is from: The Geography of Hope: A Tour of the World We Need (Hardcover)
The trouble with the majority of writing about climate change and other environmental worries is that they make people think, "Oh, hell. It's too late anyway. Why even try to do anything?" The Geography of Hope is an antidote to this kind of thinking. I am now 54 years old, and when I was 20 years old or so, I devoured ecological jeremiads such as Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. The trouble is, back then I actually thought my civilization was doomed to fall apart before the end of the 20th century. This, fortunately, didn't happen and in the meantime I got sidelined by matters too complex to detail here. Now at last I am returning to my environmental roots, but I find I simply no longer have the patience and strength to wade through dour predictions of ecological gloom and doom. Chris Turner's The Geography of Hope is the first book on this topic that I have felt glad to pick up, because it shows that it is really possible to put the brakes to the looming climate train wreck before it occurs and that sustainability is already within our grasp using existing technology, if only we would commit to it. How inspiring!
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
An interesting book buried in 480 pages of manic writing,
By
This review is from: The Geography of Hope: A Tour of the World We Need (Paperback)
Am I the only person who thinks this book needs an editor? The premise is good: seek out the people and places that have tackled global warming in a positive way and show that there are pockets of hope out there for a sustainable future. In fact the author gives very detailed and interesting accounts of many such solutions to our current environmental problems. Unfortunately you need to wade through pages of tangential writing that appear to bear little relevance to anything. Chris Turner seems to be overly preoccupied with song lyrics which he interposes in his writing for no obvious reason. Similarly, his frequent use of foul language is totally out of keeping with a work of this nature.The Weathermakers, which I would consider a companion book to The Geography of Hope, looks at the negative side of global warming. But it is substantially shorter, well organized and a bit more scholarly in tone while still being highly readable. Since this book is somewhat unique in its approach to the environmental crisis we are facing, I would still recommend it but be prepared to do alot of skimming to get to the real meat of the thesis.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Want to see more reviews on this item?
|
Most recent customer reviews |
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
