Recommended books for the month, Volume 119th, 2023.

Going Remote

By Adam Bessie

It’s about a community college professor’s experiences teaching remotely during the first two years of the pandemic. From his experiences of living with cancer, to discussing the Black Lives Matter movement, Bessie describes a complex view of life during the last two years. It tells us what going remote does to the ability to build community and to succeed.

A First Time for Everything

By Dan Santat

Long before he was an award-winning artist, Santat was afraid of the world outside. But in the summer before high school, a sponsored trip headed by a thoughtful teacher will take him from the tiny town in California, through six European cities and expose him to many firsts like a first airplane ride. The warmth of his art highlights his memoir’s lesson and makes it a great read, especially for sensitive middle-grade boys.

Hoops

By Matt Tavares

In this graphic novel, Judi always dreamed of being a basketball star, rather than star a cheerleader. When the school announces a new girls’ basketball team, Judi jumps at the chance. They find early success despite the lack of support from their school, and they change people’s perspectives of them.

The Green Piano

By Roberta Flack

Before Flack was a Grammy winner, she was a little girl in the mountains with the gift of music, whose dream was to have a piano. After the family moves, Flack’s father finds a small piano in a nearby junkyard. After the family repairs it, Flack uses it for a career in music. The biography focuses on young people realizing their own dreams.

I’d been telling Sandy about my children, Emma and Tucker, aged seven and four. Sandy, in turn, was telling me about her four children: Jane, Joe, Christopher and eighteen-month-old Kim. She seemed so pleased to have kids move into the neighborhood. That was, until the door opened and out ran Emma and Sam.

Sam was our shiny black dog we had adopted three years earlier. Sam loved to hang with the kids, serving as both playmate and protector. But Sandy began to back up as Sam approached, I had never met anyone who feared dogs. As I saw her reaction, I quickly grabbed Sam by the collar and made him sit.

“I have to get the kids ready to go to their grandmother’s,” Sandy said as she backed away from me, graciously trying to remove herself from the situation.

Suddenly her door opened, and out ran her kids. “Don’t go near it!” she screamed. The kids were circled around their mom, closely watching Sam. Emma showed Joe the proper way to slowly approach a dog. Sam accepted Joe’s affection. The kids were won over, but I knew it would take some time before Sandy would change.

From that time forward, we were careful not to let Sam cross the street to our neighbors without my company. One day, the kids were across the street playing together. Then I noticed the eighteen-month-old heading toward a little hill. Seeing a car approaching, I screamed, “Watch the baby!”

Sam stormed out the door and ran across the street toward the baby. He ran up the hill, stopping just short of knocking into her. He gently pushed her away from the approaching car. The kids, too involved in play to realize the seriousness of the situation a few minutes ago, ran toward her and Sam. The kids all cheered that Sam had come to play.

Within a year, Sam made friends with all the neighbors, and almost every family on our street had a dog. Even Sandy would occasionally come and give Sam a hug.

Getting a driving license was once a universal passage into adulthood. But now a growing minority of young people ignore or actively oppose it, into their 20s and beyond. That starts to create more support for anti-car policies in cities around the world to pass anti-car laws, changing planning rules to favour pedestrians over drivers. After a century in which the car remade the rich world, the tide begins to swing the other way.

By 1997, 43% of America’s 16-year-olds had driving licenses. But the proportion has been falling for every age group under 40. Even those who have them are driving less. A similar trend is seen in Europe. One study of five European capitals found the number of driving trips made by working people was down substantially since a peak in the 1990s.

No one is entirely sure why young adults are proving resistant to owning a car. The growth of the interest is one obvious possibility—the more you can shop online, or stream films at home, the less need there is to drive into town. The rise of taxi apps like Uber has contributed as well. Driving generally is more expensive. Other reasons seem more cultural. One big motivator is worries about climate change.

The falling popularity of cars among the under-40s chimes with the mood among city planners and urbanists. In America, New York has banned cars from Central Park and some streets. In the past few years, dozens of American cities have removed rules that force developers to provide a certain amount of free parking around their buildings.

As the example in Oxfond shows, political opposition could put the brakes on the growth of anti-car policies. But in the parts of Europe where anti-car policies have been in place, they appear to have worked. Giulio notes that almost nowhere in the world that has removed a big road, or pedestrianised a shopping street, has decided to turn back. “Once people see, they generally don’t want to go back.” If that pattern holds, the 21st century might just see the car’s high-water mark.

A new drug is generating excitement. Just a jab (注射) a week, and the weight falls off. The new drug, called glp-1 receptor agonists (受体激动剂), is shown in clinical trials to lead to about 15% weight loss. Analysts think glp-1 drugs couldn’t have arrived at a better time. In 2020, two-fifths of the world’s population were overweight or obese. By 2035, that figure could swell to more than half.

These trends are alarming because obesity causes many health problems. Carrying extra weight made people more likely to die of diseases. And being fat may affect children in schools and playgrounds. The consequences of obesity for the public purse and the wider economy are large. Despite what consumers worldwide spent on dieting and weight loss last year, the battle to get slim was largely being lost.

The new obesity drugs arrived after treatments meant for diabetics (糖尿病患者) were observed to cause weight loss. They stimulate a feeling of fullness and reduce the appetite, and switch off the mental urge to eat. But with the jabs already in high demand, there are uncertainties. Two big ones will be safety and affordability.

Consider safety first. The newness means that their long-term consequences aren’t yet known, which requires careful analysis through studies. Understanding these risks will be important, because many patients who take the drugs may need them for the rest of their lives. Another concern for policymakers is cost. In America the bill for glp-1 runs at around $1,300 a month. Judged by such prices, lifelong prescriptions look expensive.

What to do meanwhile? Governments must ensure that those who most need the drugs get them. The long-term effects must be carefully studied. States should keep pressing other anti-obesity measures, such as exercise, healthy eating and better food labelling, which may help prevent people from getting fat in the first place. But spare a moment to celebrate, too. These new drugs mean that the world’s fight against obesity may eventually be won.