Publishers Weekly
08/14/2023
Journalist Miller’s unsettling debut investigates three initiatives intended to protect humans from the ravages of nature that did “more harm than good.” According to Miller, Japan’s seawalls provided residents with a false sense of security before the devastating 2011 tsunami, with many choosing not to evacuate under the assumption that they would be protected. Nonetheless, the government’s response was to build bigger, stronger walls, despite lingering questions about their effectiveness. Examining how the Bangladeshi government has promoted shrimp farming in rice paddies overrun by saltwater as a way to adapt to rising sea levels, Miller warns that the shrimp industry’s expansion has destroyed the viability of cropland around the brackish shrimp ponds and “poisoned shallow wells that supplied village drinking water.” The author profiles individuals affected by the failed projects, describing how third-generation Arizona farmer Jace Miller’s father joined with other farmers in the 1970s to partially fund a canal redirecting water from the Colorado River to their fields, only for drought to cut off their supply and leave Jace saddled with his father’s debt from paying for the canal. Miller, by his own admission, “shies from championing solutions,” but the picture that emerges from his thorough reporting illuminates the hidden dangers in apparently easy solutions to climate problems. The result is a thought-provoking exploration of the “unintended consequences” of climate policy. (Oct.)
Peter Brannen
Miller’s globe-spanning reporting provides a necessary note of caution in an age of unprecedented change. An authoritative and thoughtful meditation rendered in vital and vivid prose.
Sierra - Jonathan Hahn
"As the planet heats up, posing manifold risks to communities around the world, Over the Seawall is essential reading for anyone who wants to plan for a more resilient future by avoiding the mistakes of the past."
Atmos
Over the Seawall is a book about highly technical events and projects, but I rarely found myself confused or bored. That’s part of Miller’s allure. He’s been covering climate change for about 15 years and teaches journalism at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He knows how to give the facts with ease, intention, and prose. If you haven’t read his work before, I urge you to take a look…Though the book touches on many topics—policy, activism, climate denial, and public health—it’s ultimately about human history. It paints a terrifying portrait of what we can expect for the future should we as a public allow our leaders to forget past mistakes.
Erica Gies
"Profound and clear-eyed, Over the Seawall, like John McPhee’s classic 'The Control of Nature,' shows that our culture’s fetish for technosolutions puts people at risk by steamrolling local knowledge and natural-carrying capacities, and pushing pseudo-security. Miller’s sensitive writing and striking metaphors lay bare the Western development machine’s arrogance, greed, and stubborn insistence on making the same mistakes again and again."
Scott Carney
"This haunting, lyrical book on humanity's effort to adapt to the changing climate poses profound questions that keep many of us up at night. What happens when the folly of mankind's progress faces off against the unstoppable forces of the earth itself? Can we keep back the rising seas with increasingly colossal mega projects? Written with verve and exquisitely drawn characters, Over the Seawall shows us that the global struggle ultimately comes down to individual decisions."
Michelle Nijhuis
As the climate crisis escalates, so do the temptations of higher seawalls, longer pipelines, and other feats of engineering. But as Stephen Robert Miller documents in Over the Seawall, such schemes can create more problems than they solve. A powerful reminder that there is no substitute for living within our limits.
Cynthia Barnett
Stephen Robert Miller has written an essential guide to ‘maladaptation’—false climate solutions that repeat past mistakes. With deep investigative reporting and compassion, he reveals the toll of large-scale engineering follies in Japan, Bangladesh and Arizona—the kind we must resist to fix the climate crisis. Over the Seawall is the climate book we need now.
Alan Weisman
A scathing tour of where human hubris has led us, from a clear-eyed chronicler.
Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences
Miller’s book can be important reading to those interested in learning more about how development decisions typically result in winners and losers, and how they often fully consider neither long-term consequences nor sporadically occurring or extreme events.”
Foreword Reviews
Speaking against short-term thinking, poor policy decisions, and the illusion of abundance, the book includes moving portraits of the local people who are most affected when fortifications fail…. Over the Seawall is a challenging, persuasive text that uses examples of infrastructure failures to urge people to adapt to a natural world that they cannot control.
International Journal of Environmental Studies
This is an honest book. It tells its tale with the tongues of the people who are living with the problems…. [Miller] does us all a service in pointing out the hubris of trying to control nature.”
JANUARY 2024 - AudioFile
Jon Vertullo narrates this ecological warning with an even tone and a deliberate pace. His thoughtful delivery allows the detailed and meticulous reporting to speak for itself, that is, without excessive drama. His task is made easier by author Miller's crisply written journalistic reports from three sites: northeast Japan, where in 2011 seawalls were no match for a massive tsunami; Bangladesh, where river embankments failed against flooding and harmed agriculture; and Arizona, where misbegotten canals channel water toward mega-tech buildings and a surf park is planned in the desert. This audiobook might have been called "When Walls Fail" because it argues convincingly that short-term solutions to climate problems have not worked and are costly, and that often letting nature be is more effective and better for the environment. A.D.M. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine
