No Good Alternative
No Good Alternative

Author: William T. Vollmann

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2018-06-05

Total Pages: 1361

ISBN-13: 0525558500

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“The most honest book about climate change yet.” —The Atlantic “The Infinite Jest of climate books.” —The Baffler An eye-opening look at the consequences of coal mining and oil and natural gas production—the second of a two volume work by award-winning author William T. Vollmann on the ideologies of energy production and the causes of climate change The second volume of William T. Vollmann's epic book about the factors and human actions that have led to global warming begins in the coal fields of West Virginia and Eastern Kentucky, where "America's best friend" is not merely a fuel, but a "heritage." Over the course of four years Vollmann finds hollowed out towns with coal-polluted streams and acidified drinking water; makes covert visits to mountaintop removal mines; and offers documented accounts of unpaid fines for federal health and safety violations and of miners who died because their bosses cut corners to make more money. To write about natural gas, Vollmann journeys to Greeley, Colorado, where he interviews anti-fracking activists, a city planner, and a homeowner with serious health issues from fracking. Turning to oil production, he speaks with, among others, the former CEO of Conoco and a vice president of the Bank of Oklahoma in charge of energy loans, and conducts furtive roadside interviews of guest workers performing oil-related contract labor in the United Arab Emirates. As with its predecessor, No Immediate Danger, this volume seeks to understand and listen, not to lay blame--except in a few corporate and political cases where outrage is clearly due. Vollmann is a carbon burner just like the rest of us; he describes and quantifies his own power use, then looks around him, trying to explain to the future why it was that we went against scientific consensus, continually increasing the demand for electric power and insisting that we had no good alternative.

No Good Alternative
No Good Alternative

Author: William T. Vollmann

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2019-07-02

Total Pages: 690

ISBN-13: 0525558519

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“The most honest book about climate change yet.” —The Atlantic “The Infinite Jest of climate books.” —The Baffler An eye-opening look at the consequences of coal mining and oil and natural gas production—the second of a two volume work by award-winning author William T. Vollmann on the ideologies of energy production and the causes of climate change The second volume of William T. Vollmann's epic book about the factors and human actions that have led to global warming begins in the coal fields of West Virginia and Eastern Kentucky, where "America's best friend" is not merely a fuel, but a "heritage." Over the course of four years Vollmann finds hollowed out towns with coal-polluted streams and acidified drinking water; makes covert visits to mountaintop removal mines; and offers documented accounts of unpaid fines for federal health and safety violations and of miners who died because their bosses cut corners to make more money. To write about natural gas, Vollmann journeys to Greeley, Colorado, where he interviews anti-fracking activists, a city planner, and a homeowner with serious health issues from fracking. Turning to oil production, he speaks with, among others, the former CEO of Conoco and a vice president of the Bank of Oklahoma in charge of energy loans, and conducts furtive roadside interviews of guest workers performing oil-related contract labor in the United Arab Emirates. As with its predecessor, No Immediate Danger, this volume seeks to understand and listen, not to lay blame--except in a few corporate and political cases where outrage is clearly due. Vollmann is a carbon burner just like the rest of us; he describes and quantifies his own power use, then looks around him, trying to explain to the future why it was that we went against scientific consensus, continually increasing the demand for electric power and insisting that we had no good alternative.

No Immediate Danger
No Immediate Danger

Author: William T. Vollmann

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2018-04-10

Total Pages: 624

ISBN-13: 0399563504

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“The most honest book about climate change yet.” —The Atlantic “The Infinite Jest of climate books.” —The Baffler A timely, eye-opening book about climate change and energy generation that focuses on the consequences of nuclear power production, from award-winning author William T. Vollmann In his nonfiction, William T. Vollmann has won acclaim as a singular voice tackling some of the most important issues of our age, from poverty to violence to the dark soul of American imperialism as it has played out on the U.S./Mexico border. Now, Vollmann turns to a topic that will define the generations to come--the factors and human actions that have led to global warming. Vollmann begins No Immediate Danger, the first volume of Carbon Ideologies, by examining and quantifying the many causes of climate change, from industrial manufacturing and agricultural practices to fossil fuel extraction, economic demand for electric power, and the justifiable yearning of people all over the world to live in comfort. Turning to nuclear power first, Vollmann then recounts multiple visits that he made at significant personal risk over the course of seven years to the contaminated no-go zones and sad ghost towns of Fukushima, Japan, beginning shortly after the tsunami and reactor meltdowns of 2011. Equipped first only with a dosimeter and then with a scintillation counter, he measured radiation and interviewed tsunami victims, nuclear evacuees, anti-nuclear organizers and pro-nuclear utility workers. Featuring Vollmann's signature wide learning, sardonic wit, and encyclopedic research, No Immediate Danger, whose title co-opts the reassuring mantra of official Japanese energy experts, builds up a powerful, sobering picture of the ongoing nightmare of Fukushima.

No Good Alternative
No Good Alternative

Author: William T. Vollmann

Publisher:

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13:

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The second volume in a timely series about climate change and energy generation draws on first-person interviews to reveal the real-world reasons behind the continuance of environmentally harmful coal mining, fracking, and natural gas production.

No Alternative
No Alternative

Author: William Dickerson

Publisher:

Published: 2012-03-29

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 9780985188672

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"Simultaneously brutal and funny, caustic and caring, 'No Alternative' is a sacrament to be shared by all the survivors who grew up at the tail end of the fragmenting century." -Jack O'Connell, author of "The Resurrectionist" "No Alternative" is a coming-of-age drama that drills a hole into the world of suburban American teenagers in the early '90s. Thomas Harrison is determined to start his own alternative band, an obsession that blinds him to what's either the mental collapse, or the eruption of musical genius, of his little sister, Bridget. Bridget boldly rejects her brother's music, and the music of an entire generation of slackers, by taking on the persona of a gangsta' rapper named "Bri Da B." "No Alternative" probes the lives of rebellious kids who transition into adulthood via the distortion pedals of their lives in an era when the "Sex, Drugs & Rock 'n' Roll" ethos was amended to include "Suicide" in its phrase. "No Alternative" is now a major motion picture starring Michaela Cavazos, Conor Proft, Chloe Levine, Kathryn Erbe and Harry Hamlin. This updated edition of the novel includes a Foreword by Harry Hamlin and an Afterword by William Dickerson, which explores the making of the film.

The Alternative: Most of What You Believe About Poverty Is Wrong
The Alternative: Most of What You Believe About Poverty Is Wrong

Author: Mauricio L. Miller

Publisher: Lulu.com

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 227

ISBN-13: 1483472264

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Clara Miller, President of the F. B. Heron Foundation: The Alternative, is not only important reading, it's imperative. Miller, a trained engineer, the one-time manager of a top social service organization and most importantly, the son of a remarkable single mother, has both lived and observed the failings embodied in our attitudes toward the poor and, as a result, the flaws in our systems meant to help people in poverty. He merges heart and soul with system thinking to yield a prescription featuring the real math, trust relationships and courage that can change the "us and them," to "upward together" and put American families in the driver's seat to build their futures.

No Depression # 76
No Depression # 76

Author: Grant Alden

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2008-10-01

Total Pages: 148

ISBN-13: 9780292719286

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For most of its thirteen-year history as a beloved and decorated music magazine, No Depression sought to be an instrument of change: to draw attention to the deep well of American musical traditions; to shine a light on performers whose gifts far exceed the size of their audiences or their pocketbooks; and to provide a safe harbor for the best long-form writing about music on the newsstand. These traditions continue through No Depression's now semi-annual series of bookazines. The inaugural bookazine, numberedND #76so as to make explicit the continuity betweenNo Depression's original and new formats, focused on the next generation of emerging roots music performers.ND #78, due out the fall of 2009, will focus on prominent families in American roots music, kinfolk who have stretched their artistic influence across generations. This will include in-depth pieces about bedrock clans of country music—the Carters and the Cashes—and folk music—the Guthries and the Seegers; profiles of country mavericks Steve and Justin Townes Earle and of jazz great Charlie Haden and his musically adventurous children; plus a more "metaphorical family" piece on the artistic "sons" of bluesman Rev. Gary Davis. The magazine's cofounders and coeditors, Grant Alden and Peter Blackstock, continue to guide the bookazine. The magazine's senior writers and contributors remain on board to shape the tone and voice of the bookazine, and its distinctive graphic design imprint continues in the hands of ND art director Grant Alden.

More Harm than Good?
More Harm than Good?

Author: Edzard Ernst

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2018-01-11

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 3319699415

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This book reveals the numerous ways in which moral, ethical and legal principles are being violated by those who provide, recommend or sell ‘complementary and alternative medicine’ (CAM). The book analyses both academic literature and internet sources that promote CAM. Additionally the book presents a number of brief scenarios, both hypothetical and real-life, about individuals who use CAM or who fall prey to ethically dubious CAM practitioners. The events and conundrums described in these scenarios could happen to almost anyone. Professor emeritus of complementary medicine Edzard Ernst together with bioethicist Kevin Smith provide a thorough and authoritative ethical analysis of a range of CAM modalities, including acupuncture, chiropractic, herbalism, and homeopathy. This book could and should interest all medical professionals who have contact to complementary medicine and will be an invaluable reference for patients deliberating which course of treatment to adopt.

There Is No Alternative
There Is No Alternative

Author: Claire Berlinski

Publisher: Basic Books

Published: 2011-11-08

Total Pages: 420

ISBN-13: 0465031226

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Great Britain in the 1970s appeared to be in terminal decline -- ungovernable, an economic train wreck, and rapidly headed for global irrelevance. Three decades later, it is the richest and most influential country in Europe, and Margaret Thatcher is the reason. The preternaturally determined Thatcher rose from nothing, seized control of Britain's Conservative party, and took a sledgehammer to the nation's postwar socialist consensus. She proved that socialism could be reversed, inspiring a global free-market revolution. Simultaneously exploiting every politically useful aspect of her femininity and defying every conventional expectation of women in power, Thatcher crushed her enemies with a calculated ruthlessness that stunned the British public and without doubt caused immense collateral damage. Ultimately, however, Claire Berlinski agrees with Thatcher: There was no alternative. Berlinski explains what Thatcher did, why it matters, and how she got away with it in this vivid and immensely readable portrait of one of the towering figures of the twentieth century.

Capitalist Realism
Capitalist Realism

Author: Mark Fisher

Publisher: John Hunt Publishing

Published: 2022-11-25

Total Pages: 116

ISBN-13: 1803414316

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An analysis of the ways in which capitalism has presented itself as the only realistic political-economic system.