Unsettled Matters

"Unsettled is a remarkable book—probably the best book on climate change for the intelligent layperson—that achieves the feat of conveying complex information clearly and in depth." —Claremont Review of Books "Surging sea levels are inundating the coasts." "Hurricanes and tornadoes are becoming fiercer and more frequent." "Climate change will be an economic disaster." You've heard all this presented as fact. But according to science, all of these statements are profoundly misleading. When it comes to climate change, the media, politicians, and other prominent voices have declared that "the science is settled." In reality, the long game of telephone from research to reports to the popular media is corrupted by misunderstanding and misinformation. Core questions—about the way the climate is responding to our influence, and what the impacts will be—remain largely unanswered. The climate is changing, but the why and how aren't as clear as you've probably been led to believe. Now, one of America's most distinguished scientists is clearing away the fog to explain what science really says (and doesn't say) about our changing climate. In Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn't, and Why It Matters, Steven Koonin draws upon his decades of experience—including as a top science advisor to the Obama administration—to provide up-to-date insights and expert perspective free from political agendas. Fascinating, clear-headed, and full of surprises, this book gives readers the tools to both understand the climate issue and be savvier consumers of science media in general. Koonin takes readers behind the headlines to the more nuanced science itself, showing us where it comes from and guiding us through the implications of the evidence. He dispels popular myths and unveils little-known truths: despite a dramatic rise in greenhouse gas emissions, global temperatures actually decreased from 1940 to 1970. What's more, the models we use to predict the future aren't able to accurately describe the climate of the past, suggesting they are deeply flawed. Koonin also tackles society's response to a changing climate, using data-driven analysis to explain why many proposed "solutions" would be ineffective, and discussing how alternatives like adaptation and, if necessary, geoengineering will ensure humanity continues to prosper. Unsettled is a reality check buoyed by hope, offering the truth about climate science that you aren't getting elsewhere—what we know, what we don't, and what it all means for our future.

This book invites readers into a growing, dynamic conversation among scholars and critics around a vibrant community of artists from an African American South. This constellation of creative makers includes familiar figures, such as Thornton Dial Sr., Lonnie Holley, and quiltmakers Nettie Young and Mary Lee Bendolph, whose work is collected in major museum and private collections. The artists represented extend to lesser-known but equally compelling creators working across a wide range of artistic forms, themes, and geographies. The essays gathered here, accompanied by a generous selection of full-color plates, survey subjects such as the artists' engagement with enslavement and liberation, the spiritual and religious dimensions of their work, the technical aspects of their work (such as the common use of "assemblage" as an artistic medium), the links between art and biography, and the evolving status of their reception in narratives of contemporary, modern, southern, and American art. Contributors are Celeste-Marie Bernier, Laura Bickford, Michael J. Bramwell, Elijah Heyward III, Sharon P. Holland, and Pamela J. Sachant.

Pretentiousness is the engine oil of culture; the essential lubricant in the development of all arts, high, low, or middle.

By addressing the major contemporary challenges to globalization, this study explains why and how the global continues to matter in our unsettled world.

The International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) has played a leading role in establishing the field of foreign investment law. It is primarily due to the ICSID that it is no longer peculiar for individuals and corporations to have legal standing in claims against governments — probably the most notable development of international law of the last half century. Now, in its fiftieth year and ratified by more than 150 states, the ICSID received in 2015 its 500th case. This book celebrates this anniversary with an overview and analysis of ICSID case law to date and, focusing particularly on unsettled issues, assesses possible developments in the institution’s next phase. This volume collects twenty-two essays by prominent practitioners with substantial experience in investment arbitration law. The topics they cover encompass such issues as the following: • the political and economic reasons behind the creation of the ICSID; • admissibility and jurisdiction; • ICSID vis-à-vis bilateral investment treaties; • States’ concerns about the ‘partiality’ of arbitrators in favour of investors; • applicable laws under the ICSID Convention; • fact-finding rules; • conflicting interpretations of ICSID Convention provisions; • interaction of foreign investment and economic development; • value of ICSID awards in the light of EU law; • annulment of ICSID awards; • effects of denunciation (Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela) and non-contracting States (Russia, Brazil, India); • attribution of conduct of State-owned enterprises (SOEs); • counterclaims; • guarantees against political risk; and • allocation of costs. As a detailed response to the question whether ICSID has contributed as promised to an improvement in the investment climate and promoted the flow of private foreign capital — and as an assessment of the present and future feasibility of the ICSID system for the resolution of investment disputes by arbitration and conciliation — this book has no peers. Considering the current crisis of investment law, the book’s immediate value not only to investors and their counsel but also to practitioners and academics in the field of investment law and arbitration and public international law cannot be overstated. Dr Crina Baltag is the author of Kluwer’s 2012 book The Energy Charter Treaty: The Notion of Investor and the Associate Editor of Kluwer Arbitration Blog.

When a man discovers his father in New York has long had another, secret, family—a wife and two kids—the interlocking fates of both families lead to surprise loyalties, love triangles, and a reservoir of inner strength—"It would be impossible to overstate just how good this book is" (Ann Patchett). Ethan, a young lawyer in New York, learns that his father has long kept a second family—a Thai wife and two kids living in Queens. In the aftermath of this revelation, Ethan's mother spends a year working abroad, returning much changed, as events introduce her to the other wife. Across town, Ethan's half brothers are caught in their own complicated journeys: one brother's penchant for minor delinquency has escalated, and the other must travel to Bangkok to bail him out, while the bargains their mother has struck about love and money continue to shape their lives. As Ethan finds himself caught in a love triangle of his own, the interwoven fates of these two households elegantly unfurl to encompass a woman rallying to help an ill brother with an unreliable lover and a filmmaker with a girlhood spent in Nepal. Evoking a generous and humane spirit, and a story that ranges over three continents, Secrets of Happiness elucidates the ways people marshal the resources at hand to forge their own forms of joy.

Talk of love surrounds us, and romance is a constant concern of popular culture. Ann Swidler's Talk of Love is an attempt to discover how people find and sustain real love in the midst of that talk, and how that culture of love shapes their expectations and behavior in the process. To this end, Swidler conducted extensive interviews with Middle Americans and wound up offering us something more than an insightful exploration of love: Talk of Love is also a compelling study of how much culture affects even the most personal of our everyday experiences.