In the meantime, we could at least start measuring our impact on the world a bit more objectively. Which means paying attention to the myriad ways in which we could potentially screw things up, every hour of every day, and yet somehow – wonderfully, exhilaratingly – do not.
Luster smashes together capitalism, sex, loss, and trauma and constructs something new with the pieces, using pitch-black humor as glue. That this Frankenstein's monster of genres and topics works so well is a testament to Leilani's talent. That it all happens in a debut novel makes it even more impressive.
In the end, Park delivers a multi-layered happy-ever-after where our heroine is not only a wizard in the gaming industry, she's pretty magic at romance, too.
How central is shipping to contemporary capitalism and trade? The introduction to Laleh Khalili’s new book, Sinews of War and Trade: Shipping and Capitalism in the Arabian Peninsula, makes clear why focusing on maritime trade is no mere niche pursuit: 90 percent of the world’s goods travel by ship. Also, at the very outset, Khalili shows that, on the map of global trade today, it is China that takes center-stage as the factory of the world — and the oil that fuels China’s manufacturing derives primarily from the Arabian Peninsula.
In Wrong, we find a biography ten years+ in the making, on a writer who is still very much alive, and whose work is still a fresh and shapeshifting influence on contemporary global subculture. As equally fresh is Cooper’s intellectual vandalism on the homogenizing control mechanisms of America in particular.