BookEnds

I’ve nearly finished “Frozen Fire,” the new techno-thriller by Greenwich resident Bill Evans, and it’s clear the WABC meteorologist can do more than give the weather report — he also tells an engaging story. Even more importantly, Evans has brought to the surface a little-known, but highly divisive debate over the potential use of methane hydrate as an alternative energy source. For a preview of the book, go here.

Found mostly beneath the ocean floor, methane hydrate is a solid compound that contains a large amount of methane frozen in the crystalline structure of water ice. Since there’s so much of the stuff — the U.S. Geological Survey suggests there is between 100,000 and 300 million trillion cu. ft. on Earth — it has the potential to be an abundant source of energy. Even better, it burns relatively clean.

But Evans, a supporter of research into methane hydrate extraction, admits that there are obstacles to harvesting the substance. For starters, it would take an enormous financial investment to start a drilling operation on the ocean floor (in “Frozen Fire,” it is risk-taking billionaire Dennis Cavendish who does just that). And though it might sound far-fetched, Evans warns that an operation could be sabotaged by radical eco-terrorists (that’s where evil Earth activist Garner Blaylock, Cavendish’s arch-nemsis, comes in).

But from what I’ve gathered, those aren’t the primary concerns of many scientists and environmentalists, who view the idea of methane hydrate extraction as yet another way to exploit and already vulnerable planet. As we have observed in the Niger Delta in recent years, oil drilling operations conducted by gas giant Shell have created an environmental disaster and contributed to political and social upheaval in that region. What then, the environmentalists ask, would happen if companies like Exxon/Mobil, Shell and Texaco were given free reign of the ocean floor?

I’ve really only scratched the surface on this debate, but I encourage anyone interested in the topic to do some research on their own. “Frozen Fire,” an entertaining and easy-to-read novel, might be a good start. And a recent article by Sonia Shah on Salon.com is also very informative on the subject.

We are facing a dire energy crisis and as Evans suggests, methane hydrate could be a viable solution. At the same time, are we willng to risk further environmental destruction to satiate our energy needs?

As an attorney who has practiced during the Rehnquist and now the Roberts era – where 5 to 4 decisions are a common occurrence — I hold my breath each time an important decision comes down from the Supreme Court because of the enormous impact these decisions have on our lives. Two examples close to home are the Kelo case (where the Court decided that the City of New London could use eminent domain to take a woman’s home against her will and transfer the property to a private developer for a non-public use) and the recent Ricci case that we have all been hearing about (where the Court required the City of New Haven to promote the highest ranking firefighters on a promotional examination that the City later determined had an illegal discriminatory impact on minority firefighters). We know so little about how the Court really works and how the relationships among the justices shape the opinions that are ultimately adopted. So I look forward to reading The Nine to find out more about the people that shape our lives, for an inside look at the secret world that is the Supreme Court, and to share ideas with all of you.

*My views expressed on this blog are completely my own and do not represent those of Silver Golub & Teitell.

** See Marilyn’s bio in the “Meet the Authors” section on the homepage.

I thought I would make one last post about Roberts as we put her book out to pasture and delve into what looks like a much more fascinating read. I’m still a little embarrassed by how awful the A-Rod book was. As I said in the beginning, I was never in it for him, but for Roberts who had lived in my mind as a goddess of journalism. So I couldn’t help myself but take a peek at what she had written most recently for Sports Illustrated’s Web site. Here are the first two graphs from her latest column on tennis champ, Roger Federer:

The Wimbledon grass has always been a bit of a yoga mat for Roger Federer, who routinely moves around Centre Court at mental and physical ease while his more bruiser-like counterparts clip-clop on its blades.

You could see Andy Roddick on Sunday try to channel the one quality that separates Federer from all the rest: elasticity. Unlike anyone else, Federer is able to bend and stretch effortlessly without losing form with a thin body free of excess. Over the past few months, Roddick has made an admirable attempt to replicate Federer’s lithe advantage by dropping 15 pounds off his boxcar frame and realizing slim is in.

I couldn’t help but sigh. The prose jumps out as being both imaginative and true, the kind that I expected in find the A-Rod book. That will always bigger blow to me, the fact that the book dragged down Roberts along with A-Rod. Who cared that A-Rod used steroids or that he is a misfit that dated Madonna? To me, it mattered more that Roberts seemed suddenly stripped of talents that I have always wished I myself could have.

Maybe like A-Rod, she succombed to the pressure and just made a mistake. And maybe, as I sometimes fumble and struggle as a reporter, I should take comfort in the fact that even the biggest superstars are fallible.

A few months ago I attended a talk by Tina Brown, part of a magazine journalism lecture series at Columbia University, where she mostly talked about her newest venture, The Daily Beast.

Brown is most famous for her stints as editor at Vanity Fair and the New Yorker, where she helped launch the careers of many writers who are today household names (OK, in east-coast-media-elite households anyway).

Jeffrey Toobin is one of those writers.

After working as an assistant U.S. attorney in Brooklyn, Toobin resumed a writing career he began in college and took an assignment covering O.J. Simpson’s criminal trial. According to Brown, after initially filing straightforward accounts of the legal proceedings, Toobin came into his own, providing the rich textural detail the New Yorker is famous for, as well as the legal insight of a trial attorney.

These days, amid all the windbags on cable television news (the mere sight of Nancy Grace sends shivers up my spine), Toobin stands out and his New Yorker pieces are a pleasure to read, even when he’s not writing about the law.

CASE IN POINT: Toobin’s profile of Barney Frank.

–CP

What’s most interesting to me about “The Nine” — and the primary reason I’ve wanted to read it — is that it reveals the amazing and eccentric characters our Supreme Court is made of. Perhaps none more so that David Souter, the retiring justice whose seat Judge Sonia Sotomayor hopes to fill once he retreats forever to the farmhouse in New Hampshire where his parents and grandparents lived.

But mostly, I’m a little obsessed with Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the trailblazer who argued sex discrimination cases in front of the Supreme Court before becoming only the second woman to sit on it. Not only did she attend both Harvard Law School (she later transferred to Columbia), but she also took notes in classes for her husband while he suffered from cancer and took care of her baby daughter.

So thanks to staff photographer Chris Preovolos and Marilyn Ramos, an attorney with Silver, Golub & Teitell in Stamford, for reading the book with me. Other staff writers from the Advocate have promised to jump in as well. It should be an interesting discussion.

For our second book selection, we’ll be reading “The Nine”, Jeffrey Toobin’s inside look at the tail end of the Rehnquist court (no, not the short-lived series on ABC.) All of this is just in time to talk about what role Judge Sonia Sotormayor hopes to play on the court she might join. Not whether she’s a liberal or a conservative. More like, whether she’ll be a big-time Washington poker player, like Rehnquist was, or whether she’ll like to hire musicians for clerks, like Ginsberg does. We start July 17.

I went hiking in the Lucius Pond Ordway/Devil’s Den Preserve in Weston Friday and, for the first time, I understood the inspiration for the naturalists and poets from New England. It was such a breezy day, with the sun lightly but steadily pressing through the shade just enough to remind me that it was summer, and with enough recent rain that the loamy smell of freshly churned earth still made it feel sufficiently like the woods.

In my mind, Connecticut consisted only of well-groomed suburbs. New England is really lucky in that industrial development happened here early in the country’s history and impressed upon its citizenry the importance of preserving open space. I grew up in Arkansas, where everyone’s backyard looks like the preserve; natural and overgrown and richly green. But because every backyard looks so lusciously untouched, Arkansans can take such views for granted. Heavy development in the northwestern part of the state has affected even my tiny hometown, which now has a stoplight on its widened highway.

All I can think about is my next hike, and to that end, our industrious and outdoor-loving web editor Jon Lucas lent me “50 Hikes in Connecticut: From the Berkshires to the Coast,” by David, Gerry and Sue Hardy. The fourth edition already looks like a good resource.

Well, I finished “A-Rod: The Many Lives of Alex Rodriguez.” It didn’t end as badly, with all the heavy psychoanalysis, as it began. But it didn’t end well. The book didn’t really tell us anything about Rodriguez, it didn’t make a hard and fast case that he is a cheater, and it didn’t tell us why he’s so hot and cold as a player.

It didn’t really tell us much of anything. But that might speak more to the subject than to the writer, and the rush to get it out might speak more to the state of the publishing industry than anything else. Reading it cost us a contributor, but hopefully our eagerness to tear it apart, honestly and critically, didn’t lose us any readers.

The holes in the book’s assessment of him as a player and a person just made me want to read more about A-Rod, and now I want to see him in action. Maybe I’ll actually catch a Yankees game this year.

Reading the book also made us realize that Selena Roberts probably lives in Westport. Sorry, Selena.

We’re ready to close the book on the ill-fated match between Roberts and A-Rod. Then it’s on to “The Nine,” the 2007 book by New Yorker writer Jeffrey Toobin about the Supreme Court. Just in time for the Sonia Sotormayor confirmation hearings. Stay tuned.