A smart, energetic, and wide-ranging series of ideas for more climate-responsive building.
An architect considers the challenges of and solutions to climate change.
In her nonfiction debut, Sutaria relates her own experiences growing up in the boiling-hot summers of Ahmedabad, India, before moving to America in 1976 to study at the School of Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin. After her studies, she worked at a number of private design firms, then for Austin’s Public Works and Transportation Department, collaborating with politicians and industry leaders in her capacity as a member of both the United States Green Buildings Council and the American Institute of Architects. In these pages, illustrated with photos, charts, and blueprints, the author draws on all of this experience to explore the ways in which rising temperatures and worsening climate conditions present challenges that thermal-conscious building designs might help to meet. Sutaria refers to her approach as “vernacular architecture,” a climate-friendly process to create spaces that respond to environmental needs and enrich the lives of those who dwell within. “The deepest roots of any culture,” she writes, “are as immersed in the environment they develop as they are in the attitudes toward that environment.” Using many examples drawn from both Indian and American building environments, the author underscores the practical benefits of her project (as greenhouse gas emissions decrease, savings in public health increase). Sutaria writes with the forceful compassion of a true believer, bluntly telling her readers that we can’t just air-condition our way out of the climate crisis—we must adapt, not only with green initiatives but also with architecture that’s less wasteful. Some elements of her book may prove almost physically painful to readers in a 21st-century America whose government has recently begun abandoning any notion of environmental stewardship in favor of “drill, baby, drill” policies, but the text’s can-do optimism will counteract a good deal of this gloom, and Sutaria is knowledgeable enough to make it all very convincing.
A smart, energetic, and wide-ranging series of ideas for more climate-responsive building.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2024
ISBN: 9798891325791
Page Count: 230
Publisher: Atmosphere Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.
Avuncular observations on matters historical from the late popularizer of the past.
McCullough made a fine career of storytelling his way through past events and the great men (and occasional woman) of long-ago American history. In that regard, to say nothing of his eschewing modern technology in favor of the typewriter (“I love the way the bell rings every time I swing the carriage lever”), he might be thought of as belonging to a past age himself. In this set of occasional pieces, including various speeches and genial essays on what to read and how to write, he strikes a strong tone as an old-fashioned moralist: “Indifference to history isn’t just ignorant, it’s rude,” he thunders. “It’s a form of ingratitude.” There are some charming reminiscences in here. One concerns cajoling his way into a meeting with Arthur Schlesinger in order to pitch a speech to presidential candidate John F. Kennedy: Where Richard Nixon “has no character and no convictions,” he opined, Kennedy “is appealing to our best instincts.” McCullough allows that it wasn’t the strongest of ideas, but Schlesinger told him to write up a speech anyway, and when it got to Kennedy, “he gave a speech in which there was one paragraph that had once sentence written by me.” Some of McCullough’s appreciations here are of writers who are not much read these days, such as Herman Wouk and Paul Horgan; a long piece concerns a president who’s been largely lost in the shuffle too, Harry Truman, whose decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan McCullough defends. At his best here, McCullough uses history as a way to orient thinking about the present, and with luck to good ends: “I am a short-range pessimist and a long-range optimist. I sincerely believe that we may be on the way to a very different and far better time.”
A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781668098998
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
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