AN Inconvenient Truth: The Crisis of Global Warming - Hardcover

Former Vice President Al Gore is currently the chairman of both Current TV and Generational Investment Management. He was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1976 and the U.S. Senate in 1984 and 1990, and served eight years as vice president of the United States, from 1993 to 2000. He is the author of the 1992 bestseller Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit. He lives with his wife, Tipper, in Nashville, Tennessee.

Starred Review. Grade 5–8—This young readers' version of the recent documentary film's companion adult volume cuts the page count by about a third but preserves the original's cogent message and many of its striking visuals. After explaining that his interest in the environment predates even his mother's reading of Silent Spring aloud to him as a teenager, Gore proceeds to document steeply rising carbon dioxide levels in our atmosphere, and then to link that to accelerating changes in temperature and precipitation patterns worldwide. Using easy-to-grasp graphics and revealing before-and-after photos, he shows how glaciers and ice shelves are disappearing all over the globe with alarming speed, pointing to profound climate changes and increased danger from rising sea levels in the near future. O'Connor rephrases Gore's arguments in briefer, simpler language without compromising their flow, plainly intending to disturb readers rather than frighten them. He writes measured, matter-of-fact prose, letting facts and trends speak for themselves—but, suggesting that "what happens locally has worldwide consequences," he closes with the assertion that we will all have to "change the way we live our lives." Like the film, this title may leave readers to look elsewhere for both documentation and for specific plans of action, but as an appeal to reason it's as polished and persuasive as it can be.—John Peters, New York Public Library
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