Review 40: Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?

Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? by Bill McKibben
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

To start off, this is the 4th book of McKibben's that I read this year, and all I've read. So far this one I've liked the least. Maybe I cherry picked better books? I don't know, but certainly after reading this one I'm not too inclined to run out and read more of his oeuvre.

This book feels like McKibben is just railing against us humans, and with some specifics towards certain people (current president, republicans, Koch brothers, etc.). Diatribe is what comes to mind. And there are tangents of other ways we as humans may be falling into not fully natural humans, with gene editing and potentially post-human with a blend of computer and biology. McKibben certainly will not go there, and desperately wishes we wouldn't.

The book isn't just about climate change, although that is a big part of the book. His solution is solar, about how much that makes sense. And it does, especially, and particularly in countries without all the energy infrastructure right now. But we need it in the modern west as well.

I do agree with McKibben's general outlook and what he is trying to do, but writing this book I don't think gets us any closer. There is serious doubt in my mind that the people whose minds need to change will read this book. Will people on the fence about climate change, pick up this book? Probably not. Yet, I'm still glad he wrote it.

McKibben has a way of being optimistic even when the outlook is grim. With this book I think he's turned a bit of a corner. Hopefully we, meaning in the west, and especially in the United States, will start to take this climate change more seriously and quickly change our ways. There isn't much time left. And that is perhaps why this book is so dire.



Thanks to Henry Holt and Co. and NetGalley for an uncorrected electronic advance review copy of this book. Although I did have access to an early review copy, I listened to the audiobook version from my library.




Previously Read Bill McKibben books:

• The Bill McKibben Reader: Pieces from an Active Life (NonFiction)
• (4 stars) Feb.-April.2019
• The End of Nature  (NonFiction)
• (5 stars)   Jan.-Feb.2019 
• Radio Free Vermont: A Fable of Resistance (Fiction) 
• (4 stars)  January.2019