Falter

Thirty years ago Bill McKibben offered one of the earliest warnings about climate change. Now he broadens the warning: the entire human game, he suggests, has begun to play itself out. Bill McKibben’s groundbreaking book The End of Nature -- issued in dozens of languages and long regarded as a classic -- was the first book to alert us to global warming. But the danger is broader than that: even as climate change shrinks the space where our civilization can exist, new technologies like artificial intelligence and robotics threaten to bleach away the variety of human experience. Falter tells the story of these converging trends and of the ideological fervor that keeps us from bringing them under control. And then, drawing on McKibben’s experience in building 350.org, the first truly global citizens movement to combat climate change, it offers some possible ways out of the trap. We’re at a bleak moment in human history -- and we’ll either confront that bleakness or watch the civilization our forebears built slip away. Falter is a powerful and sobering call to arms, to save not only our planet but also our humanity.

The poems in Marjorie Stelmach's Falter attempt to comprehend what Soren Kierkegaard in Fear and Trembling deems our "highest passion": faith--a task that he claims has remained the same for each generation and "is always adequate for a person's lifetime." In the opening section, "Inscrutability & Error," the poems consider an assortment of obstacles--misinterpretations, distractions, self-delusions, dead ends, and excuses--that complicate this task, leaving the various seekers in frustration, even despair. The title poem, which makes up the central section, follows a woman through the first difficult days of a silent retreat, guided by readings from The Wisdom of the Desert Fathers, contemplation of the natural world, and meditation on her own personal history. The poems of the final section, "The Breaking Strain of Grace," gather the hard-won bits of understanding arrived at in parts one and two and apply them to the sorrows and losses of later life. Although the pilgrimage toward a steadfast faith must continue, these poems show the seeker arriving at some provisional faiths that may serve as she nears the conclusion of her allotted lifetime.

The book poetically looks at a few failings and near failings in order to shed some light on the why, when, and how of failure. It defines failure as something rather dramatic that many times has consequences far beyond the initial happenstance. The book is not concerned with human or societal failure. It is not concerned with mechanical, chemical, or electrical failure. It is, however, concerned with personal faltering rather than failure. The book is concerned with faltering, which is a common thing that happens more frequently than failing. Faltering is a wavering or hesitating condition that precludes failure and usually prevents failure. Faltering is not always bad. It is usually when little problems surface before a big problem happens. Faltering most often is a learning situation and should be considered a good thing. Thank God people falter before failing.

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SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA FIRST NOVEL AWARD 2015 LONGLISTED FOR THE GUARDIAN FIRST BOOK AWARD 2015 LONGLISTED FOR THE DESMOND ELLIOTT PRIZE 2016 WINNER OF THE SUNDAY INDEPENDENT NEWCOMER OF THE YEAR, IRISH BOOK AWARDS 2015 WINNER OF THE GEOFFREY FABER MEMORIAL PRIZE FOR FICTION You find me on a Tuesday, on my Tuesday trip to town. A note sellotaped to the inside of the jumble-shop window: COMPASSIONATE & TOLERANT OWNER. A PERSON WITHOUT OTHER PETS & WITHOUT CHILDREN UNDER FOUR. A misfit man finds a misfit dog. Ray, aged fifty-seven, ‘too old for starting over, too young for giving up’, and One Eye, a vicious little bugger, smaller than expected, a good ratter. Both are accustomed to being alone, unloved, outcast – but they quickly find in each other a strange companionship of sorts. As spring turns to summer, their relationship grows and intensifies, until a savage act forces them to abandon the precarious life they’d established, and take to the road. Spill Simmer Falter Wither is a wholly different kind of love story: a devastating portrait of loneliness, loss and friendship, and of the scars that are more than skin-deep. Written with tremendous empathy and insight, in lyrical language that surprises and delights, this is an extraordinary and heartbreaking debut by a major new talent

Introduce students to the social science of gender.