Reader’s Diary

James Howard Kunstler

When oil gets expensive, life as we know it will change forever; so says James Kunstler, who predicts we are entering the epnonymous long emergency of this book’s title. If you’re already familiar with the terms “peak oil” and “energy descent”, you’ll find few new ideas here. On the other hand, if you think “energy crisis” is a synonym for “political scam”, you might learn a few things. Things like just how many things in our civilization depend not just on oil, but on cheap oil; cheap oil that may be gone forever as the world’s rate of consumption begins to increase faster than the rate of extraction can increase.

Unfortunately, Kunstler’s reasonable warnings are diluted by his unreasoned rejections of every possible oil alternative. While it may be true that alternative energy sources cannot replace oil, he does of poor job of making this case and his arguments degenerate into a whining screed about how we just don’t live the way he’d like us to.

Jaroslav Pelikan

This is a history of the Bible. Moreover, it’s a history of what the Bible has meant to Christians and Jews over two millennia.

David Anthony Durham

Durham compresses some events of the Second Punic War, and is sometimes vague about chronology, but this is a vivid, gripping story of a man - Hannibal - and his family.

Christopher Tyerman

This too-short, rather dull history of the Crusades suffers from Tyerman’s thematic (as opposed to chronological) approach.