Volume 56, Number 17 · November 5, 2009
In the Face of Catastrophe: A Surprise
By Bill McKibben
A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster
by Rebecca Solnit
Viking, 353 pp., $27.95
I am writing this review from the city of Malé, the capital of the Maldives. The highest point of land on this entire archipelago of 1,190 islands is maybe twenty feet above sea level, and that is the trash dump in the center of town; most of the nation is only a meter or two above the sea. Earlier this year its president announced that the Maldives would be setting aside a portion of its tourist income each year so that in the future, as sea level rose, it could buy a new homeland somewhere else.
Review, 3626 words
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