"Bold and bittersweet, a tragedy wrapped in a comedy. You can read it and laugh, or weep, but always with the shock of recognition." -Landon Y. Jones, best-selling author and National Book Award nominee for
"Great Expectations: America and the Baby Boom Generation"

Walter "Boomer" Stapleton has good reason to believe that he is the ultimate stereotype: divorced, middle-aged, tired of his job, involved with a much younger woman, and soon to lose his only child to college. He is a Baby Boomer, one of an anonymous seventy-seven million Americans at or approaching midlife.

With his fiftieth birthday just around the corner, Boomer is finished being a poster child for his generation and determined to forge a new path despite his progressively shrinking set of life options. He quits his job and leaves friends and family behind to move to New Orleans to play zydeco on his accordion. But what he encounters in The Big Easy leads him even deeper into the realm of uncertainty about who he is and where he really belongs.

From the halls of corporate America to the sidewalks and clubs of New Orleans, "Boomer at Midlife" lampoons the self-conscious Baby Boomers in a story that is at once comic, nostalgic, and melancholy.

The Hartwell Approach to Climate Policy presents a powerful critique of mainstream climate change policies and details a set of pragmatic alternatives based on the Hartwell Group's collective writings from 1988-2010. Drawing on a rich history of heterodox but increasingly accepted views on climate change policy, this book brings together in a single volume a series of key, related texts that define the 'Hartwell critique' of conventional climate change policies and the 'Hartwell approach' to building more inclusive, pragmatic alternatives. This book tells of the story of how and why conventional climate policy has failed and, drawing from lessons learned, how it can be renovated. It does so by weaving together three strands of analysis. First, it highlights why the mainstream approach, as embodied by the Kyoto Protocol, has failed to produce real world reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and delayed real meaningful progress on climate change. Second, it explores the underlying political, economic, and technological factors which form the boundary conditions for climate change policy but which are often ignored by policy makers and advocates.Finally, it lays out a novel approach to climate change guided centrally by the goal of uplifting human dignity worldwide-and the recognition that this can only succeed if pursued pragmatically, economically, and with democratic legitimacy. With contributions from leading scholars in the field, this work presents a stinging critique of current climate policy and a constructive primer for how to improve it.

The Hartwell Approach to Climate Policy presents a powerful critique of mainstream climate change policies and details a set of pragmatic alternatives based on the Hartwell Group's collective writings from 1988-2010. Drawing on a rich history of heterodox but increasingly accepted views on climate change policy, this book brings together in a single volume a series of key, related texts that define the 'Hartwell critique' of conventional climate change policies and the 'Hartwell approach' to building more inclusive, pragmatic alternatives. This book tells of the story of how and why conventional climate policy has failed and, drawing from lessons learned, how it can be renovated. It does so by weaving together three strands of analysis. First, it highlights why the mainstream approach, as embodied by the Kyoto Protocol, has failed to produce real world reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and delayed real meaningful progress on climate change. Second, it explores the underlying political, economic, and technological factors which form the boundary conditions for climate change policy but which are often ignored by policy makers and advocates.Finally, it lays out a novel approach to climate change guided centrally by the goal of uplifting human dignity worldwide-and the recognition that this can only succeed if pursued pragmatically, economically, and with democratic legitimacy. With contributions from leading scholars in the field, this work presents a stinging critique of current climate policy and a constructive primer for how to improve it.

"Bold and bittersweet, a tragedy wrapped in a comedy. You can read it and laugh, or weep, but always with the shock of recognition." -Landon Y. Jones, best-selling author and National Book Award nominee for
"Great Expectations: America and the Baby Boom Generation"

Walter "Boomer" Stapleton has good reason to believe that he is the ultimate stereotype: divorced, middle-aged, tired of his job, involved with a much younger woman, and soon to lose his only child to college. He is a Baby Boomer, one of an anonymous seventy-seven million Americans at or approaching midlife.

With his fiftieth birthday just around the corner, Boomer is finished being a poster child for his generation and determined to forge a new path despite his progressively shrinking set of life options. He quits his job and leaves friends and family behind to move to New Orleans to play zydeco on his accordion. But what he encounters in The Big Easy leads him even deeper into the realm of uncertainty about who he is and where he really belongs.

From the halls of corporate America to the sidewalks and clubs of New Orleans, "Boomer at Midlife" lampoons the self-conscious Baby Boomers in a story that is at once comic, nostalgic, and melancholy.