Comforting Whirlwind - by Bill McKibben (Paperback)

About the Book

In The Comforting Whirlwind, Bill McKibben turns to the biblical book of Job to demonstrate our need to embrace a bold new paradigm for living if we hope to reverse the current trend of ecological destruction.

Book Synopsis

In The Comforting Whirlwind, Bill McKibben turns to the biblical book of Job to demonstrate our need to embrace a bold new paradigm for living if we hope to reverse the current trend of ecological destruction.

From the Back Cover

Pointing to the now-familiar consequences of our self-centered environmental practices--the greenhouse effect, the ozone hole, and deforestation--Bill McKibben's mix of modern science and biblical wisdom forces us to acknowledge that growth and economic progress are not only undesirable but downright deadly. If we continue to press the pace of development, we will very soon complete the 'decreation' of our planet, destroying everything on it, including ourselves.

Review Quotes

Bill McKibben is one of the truly original thinkers writing today. He questions what everyone else takes for granted and finds fresh insight in the unlikeliest places. It surprises me not at all that he has plumbed the depths of Job to find wisdom everyone else has overlooked.

In his usual firm, clear prose and his usual firm, tough logic, Bill McKibben has restated the only message worth stating at all: overcoming the orthodoxy that places us at the center. Either we heed him or we perish.

McKibben's book is . . . a very good one. He offers a good analysis of the biblical text, draws out its theology, and then relates the book of Job to a modern problem. He is able to show how the one can inform the other in an inspiring way.

McKibben urges . . . an approach to nature that is grounded in joyous celebration of its wonder and beauty as well as in a humbler perception of our place in it. . . . A powerful statement.

About the Author

Bill McKibben is the author of The End of Nature, Enough, Wandering Home, and several other books, and frequently contributes to The Atlantic, Harper's, The New York Review of Books, and Orion. He is a scholar-in-residence at Middlebury College and lives with his wife, the writer Sue Halpern, and their daughter in Ripton, Vermont.