- Jubilee offer: spend £10 or more on any product sold by Amazon.co.uk on or before June 6 and you can buy The Diamond Jubilee A Classical Celebration Album for just £2.50 Here's how (terms and conditions apply)
 Trade In this Item for up to £0.25
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in Hell and High Water: Climate Change, Hope and the Human Condition for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £0.25, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Special Offers and Product Promotions
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Review
What McIntosh does brilliantly here is offer an alternative, deeply humanist version of Green politics. --The Scotsman
One of the best books around about Climate Change. --Friends of the Earth
McIntosh makes serious philosophical thinking seem essential. --Tam Dean Burn
One of the best books around about Climate Change. --Friends of the Earth
McIntosh makes serious philosophical thinking seem essential. --Tam Dean Burn
Review
You go into any bookshop and you'll see shelves and shelves of titles on this subject, and it's hard to select only a couple, but I could mention Mark Lynas's Six Degrees [and] Alastair McIntosh's Hell and High Water. What makes both these books particularly worthwhile is not only that they're very scientifically rigorous but both of them ... find a kind of rage and optimism.
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
23 of 23 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
At one point in his magnificent new book Alastair McIntosh explains the distinction between optimism and hope: the former alleviates suffering by denying reality whereas the latter draws on inner resources which can coexist with pessimism. With the accumulating evidence on climate change, he points out, at time 'one cannot help but hear the thundering hooves and feel the hot breath of the apocalypse cantering by'. And it is for this reason that he has 'been forced to abandon optimism and take recourse in hope'. For as he points out, hope, unlike optimism, is a spur for action, not a substitute for it.
While McIntosh does an admirable job of summarizing the science, economics and politics of climate change in the first section, it is the second part of the book that forms the meat of his argument. A tour de force rendered in flawless prose, the section draws on philosophy, theology, poetry, myth and literature to situate the real root of Hell and High water in the human condition. The modernity ushered in by the Enlightenment may have introduced much that is worth celebrating, but the rationality in the form of logical positivism that accompanied it has helped break the link between the inner realm and the outer world that nurtures its -- man and nature, soil and soul. The dissociation of sensibility first set in motion with the reformation and the suppression of imagination (faerie) has led to hollowing out of the human psyche; leading vacant souls ripe for colonization by consumerism. Emptied (and disparaged in the case of the New Atheists) of the spirituality that sustains inner health the culture satisfies its quest for meaning (the liminal) with a variety of addictions that approximate the experience (the liminoid). It confuses 'having' with 'being'.
McIntosh does not offer easy answers, but he does have a 12-step program for the regeneration of the human spirit and revival of its link to the world around it. I do not agree with all but that is more because of practicality than my view of their usefulness. But like Chris Hedges, McIntosh makes the important distinction between the irrational and the non-rational (love, hope, spirit et al), and stresses that the later needs to be reconciled with practicality in order to bring about meaningful change.
I had picked up this book as a diversion for an evening, but once I started reading, I had to hold everything else and immerse myself in it. I was overwhelmed. George Monbiot had it right: McIntosh IS a world changing author.
While McIntosh does an admirable job of summarizing the science, economics and politics of climate change in the first section, it is the second part of the book that forms the meat of his argument. A tour de force rendered in flawless prose, the section draws on philosophy, theology, poetry, myth and literature to situate the real root of Hell and High water in the human condition. The modernity ushered in by the Enlightenment may have introduced much that is worth celebrating, but the rationality in the form of logical positivism that accompanied it has helped break the link between the inner realm and the outer world that nurtures its -- man and nature, soil and soul. The dissociation of sensibility first set in motion with the reformation and the suppression of imagination (faerie) has led to hollowing out of the human psyche; leading vacant souls ripe for colonization by consumerism. Emptied (and disparaged in the case of the New Atheists) of the spirituality that sustains inner health the culture satisfies its quest for meaning (the liminal) with a variety of addictions that approximate the experience (the liminoid). It confuses 'having' with 'being'.
McIntosh does not offer easy answers, but he does have a 12-step program for the regeneration of the human spirit and revival of its link to the world around it. I do not agree with all but that is more because of practicality than my view of their usefulness. But like Chris Hedges, McIntosh makes the important distinction between the irrational and the non-rational (love, hope, spirit et al), and stresses that the later needs to be reconciled with practicality in order to bring about meaningful change.
I had picked up this book as a diversion for an evening, but once I started reading, I had to hold everything else and immerse myself in it. I was overwhelmed. George Monbiot had it right: McIntosh IS a world changing author.
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is an incredible book. I loved Mcintoshs last book soil and soul. Infact it is a life changing incredible read. This is different, Whereas in Soil and Soul Mc Intosh goes from Autobiography, to campagin history to deep ecology, poetry and theology all in a tapestry that challenges the psycology of death and nihilism presented by mainstream corporate greed. This book seperated in to two parts firstly explores contemporary sciences view of climate change, and secondly explores the modern human condition asking essentialy; why do we keep destroying our selves and our environment? And what can be done to transform us from "peddlars of death to seekers of life". The books tone can ocasionaly sound didactic and presumptious of our complete agreement with the authors conclusions "as we saw earlier..." or "as we shall see..." are regularly used phrases. The main thing that strikes me about Alastairs writing is it's poetry, depth, and the huge Love and sensativity shown to all life. It is very humbling and beautiful to behold. He can really tell a story too. It is difficult to read his perspective about us living in a dieing time of huge extinctions and human suffering. And hard to deny it's truth. It allso strenghtens his argumant that we need very badly to have a depth of soul, love and inner life, that can deal with loss, chaos, and violence and still give the gift that makes life worth living. Read this Beautiful Book!
17 of 19 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I've just finished reading Hell and High Water. It was an exhilarating, if not exactly comfortable, read. Alistair McIntosh says at one point how hard parts of it were to write. Climate change is an important matter but what makes this exploration of the problem and its solutions, is that it is about us.
This book unravels how the human condition, how we are and how we live now, underscores it all. Undeniably we live disconnected and incomplete lives for all our stuff. Of course we do deny it and the message of the book is to wake up, understand the addictive behaviours of the human race and move beyond it. Arguing about whether climate change is really our fault is tantamount to rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. We have lost touch with something fundamental in our headlong rush to have rather than be. This is the brokenness which drags us down. Climate change sits there along with war, waste, pollution and poverty: all by-products of human dysfunction. We can fix nothing unless we fix ourselves. Reading this book (and acting on it) can be a step in that direction.
This book unravels how the human condition, how we are and how we live now, underscores it all. Undeniably we live disconnected and incomplete lives for all our stuff. Of course we do deny it and the message of the book is to wake up, understand the addictive behaviours of the human race and move beyond it. Arguing about whether climate change is really our fault is tantamount to rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. We have lost touch with something fundamental in our headlong rush to have rather than be. This is the brokenness which drags us down. Climate change sits there along with war, waste, pollution and poverty: all by-products of human dysfunction. We can fix nothing unless we fix ourselves. Reading this book (and acting on it) can be a step in that direction.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Hope for the planet
The current confusion in some quarters regarding the topic of global warming has arisen through the interaction of a number of complex factors including misunderstanding of the... Read more
Published 16 months ago by Dr. J. G. Macdonald
A clear path forwards.
I was delighted to see some clarity for a change in the endless reams of material written about the world around us. Read more
Published 19 months ago by Sangobegger
Green And Wooly
Alastair McIntosh rose to prominence with his thought provoking Soil and Soul. In his latest offering, commissioned by an editor at Birlinn publishing, the aim was to stimulate... Read more
Published on 29 Mar 2010 by S Wood
Survival into the next century?
Hell and High Water: Climate Change, Hope and the Human Condition, by Alastair McIntosh, Birlinn, Edinburgh, 2008, 304 ff
Survival into the next century? Read more
Survival into the next century? Read more
Published on 22 Feb 2010 by Dr. H. A. Jones
From Hubris to Hope
A new Alastair McIntosh is always a great day in my household. I receive so much nurture from his soulful and common sense writing - an inspiration that is of the everyday soil as... Read more
Published on 14 May 2009 by Caitlin Matthews
Hope and Realism
Alastair McIntosh's Hell and High Water is the most informative yet most challenging book i have read on the subject. Read more
Published on 23 Jan 2009 by D. Thomson
Hell and High Water
After watching his moving speech at the DO lectures 2008, a series of environmentally themed lectures organised by organic clothing company Howies, I knew the work of Alistair... Read more
Published on 17 Dec 2008 by Ruth C
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
- Books > Science & Nature > Earth Sciences & Geography > Meteorology
- Books > Science & Nature > Environment & Ecology
- Books > Science & Nature > Popular Science > Weather
- Books > Scientific, Technical & Medical > Environment
- Books > Society, Politics & Philosophy > Government & Politics
- Shops > Amazon Green
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
