- Paperback: 256 pages
- Publisher: Icon Books Ltd (5 April 2007)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1840468017
- ISBN-13: 978-1840468014
- Product Dimensions: 19.8 x 13 x 2.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 649,447 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Product Description
"Crunch Time" features two award-winning journalists arguing about the impact of our unthinking everyday actions on the future of our world. Every age and every generation thinks it's special, that it's on the cusp of something big. This time it's true - it's Crunch Time, and what we do now will make or break the future. The problem is that the things that we do every day - drive to work, buy toys for our kids, prepare our meals, have a cup of coffee - are conspiring to break it. Terrorism, poverty, ecological meltdown, climate change, pandemics - this is the background noise we have all learnt to live with. But what if all these things could be laid at our own feet? What if our civilisation is structurally, tragically flawed? What if we are using up tomorrow today? Our society is moving faster than ever, yet it's also increasingly fragile and filled with risk. In "Crunch Time", journalists Adrian Monck and Mike Hanley argue passionately with each other about the causes of these issues and what we can do about them. Believing that living in the 21st century means being answerable to the future, they help us to understand the critical decisions that we need to make now if we want to leave anything of value to future generations.
About the Author
Adrian Monck grew up in the wilds of Norfolk and studied history at Exeter College, Oxford. On graduating he became a TV journalist with America's CBS News and later pioneered undercover reporting for News at Ten, worked at Sky News, and helped found and run Five News. He has an MBA from London Business School. Mike Hanley grew up in the eastern suburbs of Sydney, Australia, and later lived in Japan. After studying at the London School of Economics he became a journalist - interning at The Economist and launching and publishing International Risk Management for Emap. After going freelance he studied at the London Business School where he met Adrian Monck. He now lives back in Sydney with his young family.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
In that same speech, Bobby Kennedy popularised an ancient piece of eastern wisdom. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
In that same speech, Bobby Kennedy popularised an ancient piece of eastern wisdom. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Life at a turning point in world history,
By
This review is from: Crunch Time: How Everyday Life is Killing the Future (Paperback)
Plenty of people have believed they lived at a turning point in history, but Monck and Hanley give a number of reasons why our current lifestyle is particularly dangerous. "The world is now a faster, riskier, more contagious place, the `unintended consequences' of capitalism become apparent violently, critically and quickly." Written in 2004, it would appear that this is another book that foresaw all the right conditions for the economic slump.
Having introduced the idea of Crunch Time, the authors explore a series of inter-linked crises that threaten civilization as we're currently playing it. They address the excesses of consumerism, the inequalities of globalization, immigration, and dangerous science. The two writers bounce ideas back and forth, disagree with each other, and it feels like something thrashed out between friends, one in London and one in Sydney. At times it's funny and irreverent, elsewhere insightful. There are ideas and coping strategies at the end of each chapter, although they often fail to come anywhere near solutions. It's also a little patchy, which is perhaps unsurprising given the scope of the book. The chapter on the environment is a weaker one, resorting to caricatures of environmentalists as tree-huggers and bath-dodgers. It's played for laughs, but it's silly. I also disagree with their assertion that "global warming has no moral content". Climate change is caused by the rich, but the poor are affected first - it's a huge justice issue. There is a truth to Monck and Hanley's line that "global warming doesn't sicken, anger or shame us", but it should. Like many of these sorts of books, the book is bigger on the problems than the solutions, and it doesn't offer a whole lot of hope. There's just a repeat of their idea what we do next will be really important, and we all have a part to play in it - "we're all micro-players in this macro-decision moment". Quite what we're supposed to decide isn't nearly so clear. It's a fun read, but despite its good intentions, in the end Crunch Time ducks its own challenge.
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