Sunday, December 6, 2009

Last Chapters of Field Notes

I enjoyed the chapter about Burlington. I knew that it was a progressive city, but I had no idea it was making such huge strides to combat global warming. It makes me a bit frustrated; however, to think that Burlington has done so much, yet many other cities haven't.

Although I thought chapter nine was informative and well written overall, there was one thing that bothered me. At the beginning of the chapter, Kolbert says, "The Burlington Electric Department may be the only utility in the United States whose vehicle fleet includes mountain bikes." This seems a bit lazy on Kolbert's part. Why not find out for sure if it is the only utility to use mountain bikes?

I am pretty indifferent about chapter 10. I suppose it was a fine way to wrap things up, but nothing about it really stuck out at me. It was mostly just summary and philosophy.

As for the Afterword, I liked the way that Kolbert made a bulleted list of some of the new information that has come out since she finished the book. I felt that this was an efficient way to present the material to readers. I wish that Kolbert had used this technique for most of the information in this book instead of writing whole chapters about things that could have been summarized in a paragraph.