In a travelogue heavy on statistics but disappointingly pale in atmospherics, Kostigan (The Green Book
) invites readers to accompany him on a trip “into the thick of the most environmentally tenuous places on the planet” to observe the havoc caused by human behavior, from Jerusalem, where acid rain and global warming–induced salt weathering are wearing down the Western Wall, to the sewage-logged Great Lakes. He visits “the future”: the “orgy of color, mayhem, flash modernity, and squalor” of Mumbai; Linfen City, China, “the dirtiest place on Earth”; and the Eastern Garbage Patch, a mid-Pacific “lethal marine habitat” of trash “twice the size of Texas.” Post-trip, Kostigen exclaims, “Now I see people in my actions.... I feel differently about what I do and what it does to the planet.” Unfortunately, his feeble powers of description convey little feeling to the reader (the Amazon jungle is “definitely a bit of Survivor
out here”) and his naïvely optimistic claim that “We have changed the Earth's natural course of development” and “we can just as easily change its course again—for the better” is less than convincing. (Oct.)
