Recommends

Nobody Home: Writing, Buddhism, and Living in Places
Gary Snyder, in conversation with Julia Martin
Trinity University Press, 2014

Nobody Home presents three interviews conducted by South African scholar and writer Julia Martin with the poet Gary Snyder that take place from the late 1980s to 2010, along with a selection of letters between them covering the same period. Martin was a young academic in apartheid South Africa when she first reached out to Snyder, motivated by her critical work on his poetry and thinking. Martin’s study and practice of Buddhism and her intuitive grasp of Snyder’s importance as a forefather of a growing international movement of spiritual environmentalism provoked Snyder to respond with sympathy and encouragement. They had an instant rapport in letters, which led to the interviews. This is a great period for Snyder, as his thinking about the non-dualism of self/no-self and its relation to the world and all phenomena is culminating in his concentration on finishing Mountains and Rivers Without End, one of the crowning works of his generation of poets.

Human Nature & Jewish Thought
Alan L. Mittleman
Princeton University Press, 2015

Jews and Genes: The Genetic Future in Contemporary Jewish Thought
Edited by Elliot N. Dorff and Laurie Zoloth
Jewish Publication Society, 2015

One of the popular ways to dismiss plans for healing and transforming the world is to assert that the distortions we see in the contemporary world are an inevitable outcome of a fixed human nature. In his careful examination of Jewish thought, Alan Mittleman insists on the centrality of moral personhood not constrained by any set of conditions external to the process of ethical reflection and intuition. Not only are reductionist programs incoherent, he argues, they are also absurd. He argues for real freedom and transcendence but simultaneously insists on our human limitations: “We are holy — and capable of unimaginable evil.” Holding both, he suggests, is one of the great strengths of the Jewish tradition.

Some genetic diseases are more prevalent among Ashkenazic Jews than among the general population, largely because Jews were always a small population and historically predominantly married only other Jews. Elliot N. Dorff and Laurie Zoloth discuss how, as a result, “representatives of all Jewish denominations have enthusiastically endorsed embryonic stem cell research, genetic testing for diseases, and if possible, the development of genetic cures.” Yet work with genetic changes raises important ethical issues and the possibility of human arrogance seeking to transform nature with potentially unpredictable consequences. Dorff and Zoloth have brought together articles from an impressive array of scholars and ethical thinkers who grapple with some of the most difficult issues. Though much of the discussion is refracted through the frame of Jewish law, at least some of the authors are aware of the way that the capitalist marketplace, rather than ethical concerns, may already be driving genetic research and pushing for a wider use of genetic interventions than any health concerns may mandate.

Balancing on a Planet: The Future of Food and Agriculture
David A. Cleveland
University of California Press, 2014

The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible
Charles Eisenstein
North Atlantic Books, 2013

Capitalism: A Ghost Story
Arundhati Roy
Haymarket Books, 2014

Restoring the Soul of the World: Our Living Bond with Nature’s Intelligence
David Fideler Inner
Traditions Publishing, 2014

The food crisis may be where the environmental crisis becomes most personal to billions of people on this planet. The contradiction between a “socially just agriculture” and an adequate supply of food comes into sharp focus in David A. Cleveland’s careful study of the future of food and agriculture. Cleveland does a great job of laying out the major disconnects within the mainstream agrifood systems: between the places where food is cultivated and the places where it is eaten; between the places where food is grown, processed, transported, and consumed and the places where the resources (e.g., water, energy, nutrients, labor) used are from; and between the eating of food and its fundamental roles as biological, psychological, and cultural nourishment. He is less successful, however, at envisioning how enough healthy food to feed everyone on the planet can be grown, transported, and...