No Good Alternative

"[Vollmann] packs voice and passion into his examination of what we are doing to the earth, taking aim at coal, oil and natural gas and filling his book with interviews with people whose lives have been disrupted by those industries. Vollmann's intended readers, he says, are those in the devastated future." --The New York Times Book Review

"In the face of complex, contested data, Vollmann is a diligent and perceptive guide. He's also deeply mindful of those who've been sacrificed in the name of profits and political expediency. Amid the Trump administration's rollbacks of environment protections, these are incontestably important books." --The San Francisco Chronicle

"Vollmann's many fans . . . will not be disappointed . . . he packs research and voice into his impassioned works . . . Reading these two books did have an effect on me; I became even more conscious of the resources I waste in my own life." --John Schwartz, The New York Times Book Review

"One of the enjoyable things about this massive work is the way Vollmann employs irony, and that bluntest of irony called sarcasm, throughout the volume. He can be quite humorous. You might even call this the Infinite Jest of climate books . . . there's something admirable, even noble, about the sheer time and effort--and sheer humanity--that went into these volumes." --The Baffler

"Equal parts gonzo journalism, hand-wringing confessional, and one hot mess . . . the books document Vollmann's quest to understand how capitalism, consumerism, and fossil fuels are ruining the planet." --Sierra

"The best part of the books [are] the conversations Vollmann had during his travels, the sensitive histories he gives of the places he visited, and the moral impressions those conversations and places have made on him. It's these parts that made Carbon Ideologies a unique, lasting, definitive contribution to the global warming literature." --The Humanist

"An elegy to our damned epoch that's also a work of enlightenment and education . . . the book is a performance of the vexations involved in trying to understand our energy reality . . . [Vollmann's] project--not unlike that of his historical fiction--is to show with utmost fidelity what it was like to be a human involved in terrible things." --The Los Angeles Review of Books

"Vollmann portrays individuals who have endured intimidation to speak out against the 'callous villainies' of fuel corporations. Unflinching, exacting, and forthright, he brings abiding respect, empathy, and tenderness to this endeavor . . . Invaluable, enlightening, and heartrending testimony to how enmeshed we all are in the carbon-industrial complex and accelerated climate change." --ALA Booklist