Kirkus Review
Cheer up, world: we're killing each other less, except in our cars, and living in a boom. Thus this contrarian pep talk by longtime Atlantic contributor Easterbrook (The Game's Not Over: In Defense of Football, 2015, etc.).Optimism is out of style, but by the author's account, it shouldn't be. When Donald Trump came into office, the unemployment rate was low enough that the number "would have caused economists of the 1970s to fall to their knees and kiss the ground." Just so, crime is down almost everywhere, inflation is low, food cheap, fuel abundant despite dire warnings of peak resources. Even so, writes Easterbrook, Trump rose on a wave of warnings that America was going to hell in a handbasket, and he had a willing audience that accepted his dire admonitions without question. Why? Well, argues the author usefully, nations as well as people feel their age, and an aging society is naturally going to subscribe to the "declinist" view that things now are worse than when they were in its youth. One has only to go to an American city to see that things are vibrant, blessedly quiet compared to the clamor of a city in the developing nations, and blessedly pollution-free compared to other parts of the world. In his somewhat scattershot argument enumerating all the good things that are going on, though, Easterbrook sometimes inadvertently offers support for the gloomy view. For instance, while it may not be true that American jobs are being shipped off to China, it is true that in China, the same jobs no longer exist for humans because robots are doing them. That gloomy view is unhealthy, he suggests, especially in its Trumpian manifestations of white victimhood, which has little basis in reality but still channels those declinist feelings into widespread aggrievement.Easterbrook's assurances, however well-based, will ring hollow for many, but it's an argument worth considering. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
New York Review of Books Review
Picture This: Scrolling through Pinterest one day, Tomi Adeyemi saw something that would change her life: "a digital illustration of a black girl with bright green hair." The image, which burrowed into her subconscious, "was so stunning and magical" that it inspired her to begin an epic fantasy trilogy that draws equally from current events and African culture. The first volume, "Children of Blood and Bone," which enters the Young Adult list at No. 1, "is an epic West African adventure," Adeyemi explains, "but layered within each page is an allegory for the modern black experience. Every obstacle my characters face, no matter how big or small, is tied to an obstacle black people are fighting today or have fought as recently as 30 years ago." Drawing Fire: Did you know that the United States Army has an artist-in-residence program? No? Neither did the novelist Brad Meitzer, who discovered it while he was filming an episode of his cable TV show, "Lost History," at Fort Belvoir in Virginia. "They were giving me a tour and showing me their art collection," he says. "I kept thinking, 'Why does the Army have all this art?' " Meitzer, an enthusiastic researcher, soon discovered that "since World War I, the Army has assigned at least one person - an actual artist - whom they send out in the field to, well... paint what couldn't otherwise be seen. They go, they see, and they paint and catalog victories and mistakes, from the dead on D-Day to the injured at Mogadishu." The idea for "The Escape Artist" - which debuts this week at No. 1 on the hardcover fiction list - soon sprang into his head. "Imagine an artistsoldier whose real skill was finding the weakness in anything. 'The Escape Artist' started right there," he says. Other research for the book sent Meitzer to Dover Air Force Base, which houses "the mortuary for the U.S. government's most top-secret and high-profile cases. I became obsessed with it. In this world, where so much of the government is a mess, Dover is the one place that does it absolutely right," Meitzer says. "It is the one no-fail mission in the military. When a soldier's body comes home, you don't mess it up." The most interesting thing he learned there, which he obviously incorporated into the novel, was also the oddest: "When your plane is going down and about to crash, if you write a farewell note and eat it, the liquids in your stomach can help the note survive the crash. It has really happened. Next time you're on a plane and hit turbulence, you're going to be thinking of me." ? 'Layered within each page is an allegory for the modern black experience.'
Choice Review
Journalist Easterbrook continues the argument begun in The Progress Paradox (CH, Oct'04, 42-1016): life gets better through change, but change makes people anxious that the good things they make can't last. He proposes faith in the dynamism of the human ability to mitigate problems versus the catastrophism fashionable among academics, pundits, and politicians. The author tries to thread a middle path, favoring both market solutions and sensible regulation, with a clear libertarian tilt. The strength of the book is how Easterbrook marshals the extensive evidence that things are getting better for most people in most areas of life--even as politicians of the left and (especially) the right push a false narrative of decline and "carnage." Chapters on how the world is meeting the challenge of climate change and why nature can never collapse are particularly strong. The chapter on inequality, on the other hand, focuses on libertarian policies without really addressing liberals' ethical concern with inequality. Still, this is a strong, teachable, empirical case for optimism about why, to use the title of the concluding chapter, "it will never be too late." Summing Up: Highly recommended. Public, general, and undergraduate collections. --Beau Weston, Centre College
Library Journal Review
In assessing the state of current society, -Easterbrook (The Progress Paradox) doesn't predict disaster, but he isn't overly optimistic either. The author maintains that human civilization faces real problems and that threats can surface unexpectedly. While bald eagles are no longer endangered and forests are advancing, not retreating, we are producing more food on less land and obesity has replaced starvation as the most common health risk across the globe. Easterbrook challenges politicians promising a return to the "good old days," and politician Bernie Sanders's statement that Americans are being "poisoned" by pollutants caused by corporate greed. The author continues that, compared to a century ago, Western societies have the benefit of better access to education, food resources, and health care; an increased life expectancy; end even improved air and water quality. Despite threats to political stability, he concludes, we are still making progress. But on political balance, -Easterbrook argues that we have reason to feel hopeful, not least because of our resourcefulness in solving past problems. -VERDICT A well-written account of a pertinent topic; readers will flock to this book.-David Keymer, Cleveland © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
