An Inconvenient Truth
An Inconvenient Truth – Review
I have seen An Inconvenient Truth, the movie; and, I have heavily browsed An Inconvenient Truth, the book, at a local bookstore. I enjoyed the movie, and I eventually chose not to buy the book. This review was mainly written for people who have seen the movie, and are mistakenly thinking of eventually picking up the book. It’s unfortunate that there are no preview pages currently available on Amazon. The book is not printed like a typical non-fiction piece of black-and-white text and charts. Instead, ninety per cents of the pages are full-page, full-color photographs, maps, charts or graphs, with a few sentences or brief paragraphs on each image depicting the situation. While there are 328 pages, it can probably be widely read by most people in the time it gets to watch the movie. Most of the photos and graphics are faithful copies of the ones shown in the film. In most cases where animations were shown in the film, a sequence of comparable graphics are in the book. I would say An Inconvenient Truth becomes a very good “coffee table” book — easy to pick up, flip through quickly, look at some interesting graph, and share and discuss among friends. The book’s goal, in my opinion, is to say, “global warming is a large, actual problem requiring critical attention, and we can solve it,” and it does a excellent job at that. It is beyond the possibility of the book to discuss solutions in any detail, and it leaves you with a few manages to help solve global warming (in the back of the book), but specifics are eventually left mainly as an exercise for the reader. Gore saies that (lack of) political will is the major obstacle to correctly solving the issue, and he encourages readers to contact their political leaders to change that. Like the film, there are mini-biographies of Al Gore laced throughout the book — about five; each touches on a breaking point in Gore’s life — usually a loss or near loss — that guided him down the path that lead him to effectively making this book. I could have done without these, as I feel they distract from the extra subject of the book, but they are easy to skip. (I do see the value in possibly including them, however, and you will find them interesting if you need to know more about the author’s private life.) They are in a unique style from the place of the book; they widely read a mostly bit like a magazine, with quarter- or half-page-sized (usually black and white) photos usually accompanying them. In conclusion, the book is essentially the same as the film, but in a handy, take-it-with-you “book” form. The book includes a few more photographs, and a useful “Top 10 Arguments Against ‘Global Warming is Real’” (something like that) at the end, but not much else. I enjoyed the release of the film more, as I deeply felt the effect of Gore’s speeches (where timing was sometimes very important) and the conversational type of the film did not translate as well as they could have on to the page. Recommended if you can’t see the film, if you don’t choose to sit through the “Al Gore” portions of the film, or if you loved the film and want a hardcopy to show your friends some of your favorite charts. Not highly recommended if you’re currently looking for more extensive treatment of the material.