Oil and Honey centers partly on climate change, a subject on which Bill McKibben (The End of Nature) is expert, but it is also a deeply personal book. Having entered into a land-share agreement with his friend Kirk Webster, a beekeeper, McKibben finds his home and Webster's apiaries exerting a gravitational pull just as his political activism takes him far and wide. These two sides of his life--personal and political, local and global, analog and digital--are the focus of this combination memoir and call to action.
The subtitle refers to McKibben's journey from writer to activist, by way of 350.org and the Keystone Pipeline--a trip he did not intend but found obligatory. Activist though he may be, McKibben remains a fine writer, evocative, articulate, clever and humble in examining his mistakes. In piercing prose, he unites his longstanding status as an authority on climate change with his novicehood in the world of beekeeping. He muses on the small-scale and private implications of our changing world, which lead him to work with his family and Kirk's bees in his beloved local community in Vermont, and on the necessity for global action to combat the continuing quest for fossil fuels.
Oil and Honey travels the world but always cycles back, like the seasons, to McKibben's Vermont home, likening global systems to beehives in a manner both profound and lyrical--and important. --Julia Jenkins, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia