Book Notices

Ellensberg-based writer John Bennett's most recent book was at first intended to be an allegorical children's story, but grew into a novel.

The antagonist of the story, Moloch, takes its name from an Old Testament deity to which children were sacrificed, a practice society still engages in with increased enthusiasm. Consumerism is the new Moloch, manifesting itself like cancer in war, politics, the arts and religion, in every nook and cranny of human endeavor, draining the intrinsic beauty out of life and mutilating the innocence and magic of childhood with its commercial meat hook.

In the Era of the Great Schism, Mankind splits into two factions: Hunters, who are locked into a mindset called the Hard World; and Dreamers, who develop magical powers that give them sanctuary in a parallel world called The Secret Place.

This is the story of the coming of Moloch, a horrific force that mutates out of the strife-torn Era of the Great Schism, feeding on spiritual marrow and threatening Mankind's extinction; and it is the story of the children who challenge Moloch, with their innocence and with an army of mind creatures that they eject into the outer world and call (for reasons made evident as the plot thickens) "Tire Grabbers."

from the publisher

The Revenge of Gaia: Earth's Climate Crisis & The Fate of Humanity

Bestselling author James Lovelock- father of climate studies and originator of the influential Gaia theory-which views the entire earth as a living meta-organism-provides a definitive look at our imminent global crisis. In this disturbing new book, Lovelock guides us toward a hard reality: soon, we may not be able to alter the oncoming climate crisis. Lovelock's influential Gaia theory, one of the building blocks of modern climate science, conceives of the Earth, including the atmosphere, oceans, biosphere and upper layers of rock, as a single living super-organism, regulating its internal environment much as an animal regulates its body temperature and chemical balance. But now, says Lovelock, that organism is sick. It is running a fever born of the combination of a sun whose intensity is slowly growing over millions of years, and an atmosphere whose greenhouse gases have recently spiked due to human activity. Earth will adjust to these stresses, but on time scales measured in the hundreds of millennia. It is already too late, Lovelock says, to prevent the global climate from "flipping" into an entirely new equilibrium state that will leave the tropics uninhabitable, and force migration to the poles. The Revenge of Gaia explains the stress the planetary system is under and how humans are contributing to it, what the consequences will be, and what humanity must do to rescue itself. (Ed.'s note: Lovelock also makes a thought-provoking though controversial case for using nuclear energy.)

from the publisher

This is Burning Man: The Rise of a New American Underground

A provocative look at the extraordinary annual Burning Man festival-held each year before Labor Day, and drawing thousands of people from all walks of life to the forbidding Black Rock Desert in Nevada-spotlights the radically self-reliant and vibrantly creative community that gathers for a week-long stay that culminates in the burning of a symbolic wooden man. The glamorous and anarchic aspects of the makeshift city-ideas that are at once ingenious and unimaginable in normal society-are detailed including a three-story temple composed of discarded dinosaur puzzle pieces, a giant flame-spewing metal-lotus flower, and a glowing white whale sailing over the starry desert sky. The magnificent spirit of a festival where money and spectators are not allowed is captured here, bringing a piece of the whimsical, strange, and enlightened energy to those who've never participated as well as to veterans wishing to reminisce.

from the publisher