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Friday, May 6, 2016

Review of "Tipping Point for Planet Earth"

I won this book as a part of the Goodreads Giveaway and was very excited to receive it. Reading “Tipping Point for Planet Earth” was like watching a lioness take down a gazelle, the miraculous beauty, grace and proficiency of the story stand toe to toe with the calculated, merciless gore and horror of the message and I could not look away.
Anthony Barnosky & Elizabeth Hadly interweave professional acumen and personal experiences to tell a tale that both educates and fascinates. Reminiscent of 19th century adventure novels that packed practical science teaching between the slats of exciting experiences (“20,000 Leagues Beneath the Sea” listed genus and species of hundreds of fish and “Journey to the Center of the Earth” was practically a geology textbook) this book recounts the author's’ adventures and uses them to illustrate their scientific conclusions, but unlike M. Verne’s missives, the adventures were real!
Very much in the vein of Elizabeth Kolberts “The 6th Extinction”, this style adds interest, readability and accessibility to the work, albeit not quite as successfully as Ms Kolbert’s wonderfully compelling book did. Still a relatively low strain read, “Tipping Point” is packed with supporting statistics; there will be no claims of cherry picking data as it was harvested with the breadth of a combine. As a casual reader with a strong interest in the subject matter and science in general, perfection would have been less statistics with more of the anecdotal prose instead. It read more like a scholarly paper, whereas Kolbert’s read like a book.
This book could join “Silent Spring” in importance and be looked back upon by future generations as the clarion call that saved us all, or the harbinger raven on the mantle, whose warnings went unheeded until our downfall. I loved reading “Tipping Point” and will recommend it to all whose hands I can pry from their ears, eyes and mouths…
Chuck Hinton 5/6/16