February 1, 2024
Climate optimism, a Cold War scientific fantasia, Slow Horses magnificence, and Errol Morris meets the king of spy thrillers
Not the End of the World by Hannah Ritchie [9/10]
One of the talented geeks (that's a compliment, by the way) enumerating the details of the climate crisis at website Our World in Data, Hannah Ritchie has done us all a service by addressing the big picture of the challenges of our future. Taking inspiration from one of the heroes of "the data shows us our world has improved over the last century" school of thought, the late Hans Rosling, Ritchie's thesis is crystal clear and explicated by her new book's title: Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet. Yes, humanity faces enormous perils studded with prospects of disaster, but one can readily see a happy future fed by all the decarbonization and technological efforts so far. Examples jostle for the reader's attention: "“It took countries like the UK and the US two centuries to go through the rise and fall of air pollution. With new technologies, countries are going through this transition four times as quickly. Better yet, some of the poorest countries might be able to skip the curve entirely.” Are cities bad? “It’s a romantic idea, but it couldn’t be further from the truth. Our cities and urban areas take up just 1% of the world’s habitable land. Agriculture takes up 50%. Our biggest footprint on the world’s land is not the space that we ourselves take up, and build our houses on; it’s the land that’s used to grow our food. This is the biggest driver of deforestation, not the rise of urbanisation. In fact, the migration of people from rural areas to cities has mostly been good for protecting our forests.” Ever since publication, controversy has ranged over a number of Ritchie's assertions, often on more minor issues, but at least she presents data that can be analyzed. For me, the crowning achievement of Not the End of the World is the way it pivots over the second essential task for humanity (after electrifying everything), which is to cut meat production and consumption markedly. On that our future depends and the reader's congruence with the author's optimism will depend on how credible this prospect is.
The Maniac by Benjamin Labatut [8/10]
Chilean author Benjamin Labatut stunned the literary world in 2020 with a fiction-fact blend about early 20th Century scientists, When We Cease to Understand the World. His latest, The Maniac, has a similar bent but is, in my opinion, vastly superior to the earlier one. Rather than testing my patience, as the earlier one did, The Maniac is such a virtuoso rush of fictional/actual reportage spanning a century and bookended by tales of Paul Ehrenfest, despairing peer of Einstein, and the 2016 battle royale between South Korean Go titan and an AI program, AlphaGo. In between, and occupying the heft of the book, is the story of prodigious scientist and intellectual John von Neumann, who was instrumental in birthing the atomic and hydrogen bombs, the computer age, AI, nuclear warfare theory, and game theory. Unlike the earlier book, I surrendered to Labatut’s gold-spun stories covering von Neumann from different character viewpoints. I surrendered even when, say, he spoke in the voice of physicist Eugene Wigner, a voice I found unfamiliar despite reading so much about Wigner. The outsized, super-fervid brain and personality of von Neumann is brought to stunning life, and the scenes around his 1957 death read like science fiction come to reality. The Maniac is a virtuosic delight indeed.
Slow Horses Season 3 [8/10]
Season 1 of Slow Horses was delightful (my review), Season 2 triumphed (my review), what then of Season 3? This season is based on Mick Herron's third book in the series, Real Tigers, a twisty thriller that has now, in the capable hands of a varied set of screenwriters and directors, come to life in six fast-paced episodes of fun. This time around, someone has kidnapped Catherine Standish, ex-drunk and current secretary of the brilliant, seemingly oafish Jackson Lamb, el supremo at Slough House, home to MI5/Regents Park rejects. From a Bond-esque opening flashback scene in Istanbul plus the present-time kidnapping, the action never ceases. Gary Oldman remains priceless as Lamb, Kristin Scott Thomas has never been as witty and icy as her Lady Diana here, and the actors playing the seven other "slow horses" are perfectly cast and top notch in execution. The wit, mostly taken from the novel, is worth watching the show for, and the episode-by-episode direction is stylish without being slick. All in all, my only very minor comment concerning another sheer pleasure of a season, is that the underlying book felt gritty and realistic, whereas this season seemed over-frenetic (without losing control or picking up plot holes) and even sometimes a tad implausible. Might they have benefitted from drawing Season 3 out to ten episodes?
The Pigeon Tunnel by Errol Morris [9/10]
Documentarian Errol Morris is, I suspect, a matter of personal preference. His offscreen, camera-up-close dissection of his eclectic target list of human subjects could put viewers off. I find his forensic research (he seems to have dug into his subjects’ lives with the passion of an academic historian) and no-holds-barred questioning to be riveting and revelatory. His recent The Pigeon Tunnel tackles famed spy fiction master John le Carré just before his 2020 death, and he finds the master of sleight of hand in a rare revelatory frame of mind. Much of the narrative explored by interlocutor and subject will be familiar to anyone who has read the novels and the previous, often slightly sly autobiographical writings, but Morris elicits truly moving admissions from his subject. Morris uses period and archival footage, plus recreated scenes, to magnificent effect, imbuing the entire documentary with a Cold War dread. The Pigeon Tunnel might seem like it is for specialists only but anyone interested in storytelling, espionage (as an expression of the pleasure of deceit), and truth should lap it up.
Came for the nuclear history - then realised you had excellent book & film reviews to get stuck into too 😄 I also loved Slow Horses and have the Le Carre doc on my watch list. This review may just push it up top of that list.