Houston Southard

john Green - The anthropocene, reviewed

John Green reviews the modern world using the too-familiar Likert scale. Before becoming a global fiction sensation, Green cut his teeth doing 175-word reviews at booklist.com. He loved being forced to cram a novel's intro and analysis all into a few paragraphs, whereas his 5-star reviews of humanity are cheeky criticisms of how social media (pot, kettle) has made everyone a reviewer now that everything’s subjected to review. Medication, restrooms, service workers, our immediately-gratifying minds jones for ever smaller distillation, and so Green applies this bastardized methodology to things too large for single point review. He does this by combining a 5-star review with thoughtful and optimistic expositions that often invert our understanding of household ideas.

The Great Gatsby is often lauded as a celebration of excess, whereas increasingly fewer see it as Fitzgerald did: A biting critique on the carelessness of entitlement. Green gives Gatsby 3.5 stars.

The Teddy Bear was created after a washington post article cartooned a cuddly bear from the retelling of bear-hunting Teddy Roosevelt taking pity on a chained bear because killing it would be bad sport. As a child’s universal security blanket, what's omitted is Teddy still had one of his men execute the bear. Green gives Teddy Bears 2.5 stars.

Monopoly equates property acquisition with completeness, unaware it instills wealth as a mere roll of the dice. To this day Hasbro credits creator Charles Darrow and how his bootstrapping makes Monopoly a roadmap for a successful life, only Darrow stole Elizabeth Magie's "The Landlord's Game" and patented it as his own, and so this story of capitalism's success is really a parable of capitalism's failure. Monopolization of other's work turned an inventor's lambasting of capitalism into a triumph of getting richer by making others poorer. Green gives Monopoly 1.5 stars.

This book is three parts memoir, positive global outlook and cautionary tale. It is deeply personal anecdotes with fascinating facts that read as if wikepedia pages were written as a form of therapy.

I give Green and the Anthropocene 4.5 stars.