by Richard Subber | May 22, 2025 | Book reviews, Books, Human Nature, Politics, Power and inequality
What if we run out of fish?
Book review:
The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History
by Elizabeth Kolbert
New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2014
319 pages
The unsurprising but unfamiliar takeaway from The Sixth Extinction: global climate change isn’t the only globally devastating problem that we have to deal with because it may make human beings extinct on our planet.
Mankind and womankind are changing the biosphere of Earth: animals, other living creatures, and plants are being extinguished at a devastating high rate, as a result of human agency. In the plainest terms: we need these animals, other living organisms, and plants in order to survive. There is no substitute for them.
We’re not just talking about a few snail darters in an environmentally endangered stream somewhere, and Kolbert isn’t doing sloganeering about “save the whales” or anything like that.
Extinctions of important elements in the natural food chain are continuing and accelerating, as a result of humans’ ability to interact with nature in both positive and negative ways on every land mass and body of water on the surface of the globe. Changes in the environment and changes in the food chain are happening too fast for many species to adapt and survive. What do we do if bees stop pollinating our fruit trees? What do we do if the oceans continue to become more acidic and won’t support the fish stocks we rely on for food?
The Sixth Extinction is a frightening read. It’s also a more difficult read than it needs to be: Kolbert’s prose is engaging and literate (this isn’t a beach book, no way), but it seems like she wrote two different books and then shuffled their pages together. Her devastating and irrefutable message is nearly obscured by her detailed treatment of example species like penguins, foraminifera, graptolites, corals, and little brown bats. Be prepared to skim.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
Book review:
American Scripture:
Making the Declaration of Independence
…basically, it’s trash talk to King George
by Pauline Maier
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Seeing far: Selected poems with 47 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | May 10, 2025 | American history, Book reviews, Books, Democracy, History, Joys of reading, Politics, Power and inequality
seemingly unavoidable…
Book review:
The Demon of Unrest
by Erik Larson (b1954)
New York: Crown Publishing Group, div. of Penguin Random House, 2024
565 pages
You’ll recognize the casually engaging prose and the dedicated storytelling style of Erik Larson. It’s a pleasure to read everything he writes.
Larson digs deep to explore the nature of the “demon of unrest” that made trouble for decades and wouldn’t stop provoking the evil sentiments and the violent politics that preceded the historic outbreak of the American Civil War in the Charleston harbor in April 1861.
The Demon of Unrest names and spotlights all the characters who played mostly behind-the-scenes roles as Lincoln and Davis and Beauregard and Scott and Seward and Ruffin and their well-known colleagues blustered and schemed and waited and welcomed and feared the seemingly unavoidable war to end slavery.
No matter how much you know, you’ll learn something more about the assault on Ft. Sumter by reading this book.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
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As with another eye: Poems of exactitude with 55 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Mar 27, 2025 | Book reviews, Books, Politics
The merry-go-round keeps turning…
Book review:
Age Power:
How the 21st Century Will Be Ruled by the New Old
Ken Dychtwald (b1950)
New York: TarcherPerigee, 2000
288 pages
Dychtwald reviews the continuing retirement of Baby Boomers, and gives his take on the impact of extended life spans for everyone. He covers economics, politics, health care, and workplace issues.
The text of Age Power is a bit over-written (like most books on current issues). It’s easy to recognize the parts that can be skimmed, that is, the abundant details of the flamingly obvious: the Boomers are going to live much longer than any generation that preceded us, and we’re not ready for the consequences.
Age Power: How the 21st Century Will Be Ruled by the New Old
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
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Writing Rainbows: Poems for Grown-Ups with 59 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Mar 25, 2025 | Politics, Power and inequality, Reflections, Tidbits
forget the small potatoes…
“…stop seeking the impossible,
the short-sighted,
and the unnecessary.”
from The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman
New York: Portfolio/Penguin, 2016
p. 101
Of course, I realize that each person has a personal definition of “the impossible, the short-sighted, and the unnecessary.”
The point is:
Forget about what you can’t change, and forget about the small potato stuff.
Commit to doing a good thing.
Commit to resisting the bad stuff that touches you in ways you can avoid.
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Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
Book review: Ethan Frome
not being satisfied with less…
by Edith Wharton
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Writing Rainbows: Poems for Grown-Ups with 59 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Mar 23, 2025 | Books, My poetry, Poetry, Politics, Reflections, Tidbits
Too many gulfs…
Hand me that hammer
This lightening sky pulls my eye
upward from newly darkening earth.
Our troubled plain
has no points of light just now.
We face fears, terrors, hates, imprecations,
repudiations, exclusions…
Too many gulfs appearing,
too few bridges imagined
in the grim thoughts of too many.
I will build one bridge today,
I welcome this lightening sky
to ease my work.
November 9, 2016
I work on building a bridge every day.
I try to do a good thing every day.
That’s good for me and for America.
It helps to keep me sane.
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
Book review: All The President’s Men
The men and women
who crave power…
by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward
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Writing Rainbows: Poems for Grown-Ups with 59 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
Your comments are welcome—tell me what you’re thinking.
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by Richard Subber | Feb 25, 2025 | Democracy, Human Nature, Politics, Power and inequality, Tidbits
elusory wisdom…
“Let the people keep a watchful eye
over the conduct of their rulers,
for we are told that great men
are not at all times wise.”
Samuel Adams (1722-1803)
Phony felons aren’t wise, either.
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Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
Book review: Six Plays by Henrik Ibsen
…his bleak insight into human nature
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many waters: more poems with 53 free verse poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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