The Beauty Bias: The Injustice of Appearance in Life and Law by Deborah L. Rhode (Oxford University Press, 2010)
In this new book, which pays a debt to Naomi Wolf’s seminal feminist work “The Beauty Myth,” Deborah L. Rhode, a Stanford law professor, sees “discrimination against people based on what they look like as deep-seated–and she also has deep faith in the power of law to address it.” Wolf’s argument that the demands of feminine beauty are deeply at odds with feminist liberation is far from outdated, according to Rhodes and reviewer (and Slate editor) Emily Bazelon. Rhodes, though, takes a legal perspective, turning “her inquiry from individual choices to the legal framework in which they’re made. Are cosmetic surgery and diet products safe and well-regulated enough? Are legislators and courts sticking up enough for people” who are discriminated against because of their looks? For the record, men are largely unaffected, unless they are short.
Cyber War: The Next Threat to National Security and What to Do About It by Richard A. Clarke and Robert K. Knake (Ecco, 2010).
This new book co-authored by Richard A. Clarke has the former White House terrorism expert cautioning that he “was about as successful at getting the Bush administration to take cyber-war seriously as he was at warning them of Al-Qaeda” in spite of his insistence that a cyber-war is the next big, destructive thing. Finding his audience skeptical, Clarke decided to write a book out of necessity, according to reviewer Jeff Stein, “taking his campaign to the bookstores and the airwaves, wrapping his urgent policy prescriptions in easy-to-digest, occasionally riveting, tales from the cyber-front.”
Bottled & Sold: The Story Behind Our Obsession With Bottled Water by Peter H. Gleick (Island Press, 2010)
This reviewer shares nostalgia with scientist and author Peter H. Gleick for water fountains and their promise of abundant, clean, and free public water. Our contemporary reliance on bottled water, however, should make us angry, not just wistful, as it has Gleick. Although he might have done well to focus his condemning eye on public officials as well as the peddlers, Gleick elaborates on a solid argument, namely that, “rather than shore up the natural processes that have provided us with drinkable water for centuries, we have invented an elaborate business that causes more harm than good.” And, in doing so, we have failed.
Turned Out Nice: How the British Isles will Change as the World Heats Up by Marek Kohn (Faber and Faber, 2010).
Luke Jennings begins his review of sociological theorist Marek John’s “somber” and “dense” book on climate change by debunking a popular global warming analogy: that a frog plunged into slowly warming water will haplessly allow itself to be boiled. Not so. But is there hope for humans, sitting placidly while their planet heats up? Specifically, what about the British? Depending on which part of what island you call home, by the end of the century you will be living in a barely hospitable, scorched landscape, fighting malaria, air conditioning long-banned, with little aid from the government. Time for Britain’s frogs to leap from the pot before, to use a more local analogy, their goose is cooked.
