An elegant meditative book teaches a painfully ironic life lesson in German-Swiss author Mercier's searching 2004 novel, a critically acclaimed international bestseller being published in the United States for the first time. He who learns the lesson is 50ish Raimund Gregorius, a philologist who teaches Latin, Greek and Hebrew at a Swiss high school--until an unknown woman excites the scholar's interest in an obscure book of philosophical observations penned by an equally unknown Portuguese author. Impulsively abandoning his academic responsibilities, Gregorius acquires the rare volume, ponders its contents and travels to Lisbon to research the life of its "vanished" author. He discovers that Amadeu de Prado, a would-be priest who became a renowned physician, had led an even more complex life as a member of the resistance movement opposing Portugal's notorious dictator Antonio Salazar. The story emerges from Gregorius's meetings: with Prado's aged sister Adriana, the stoical though not uncritical preserver of his memory; a contemplative priest with whom the nonbelieving doctor had often debated theology; the brilliant and beautiful colleague Estefânia, who may have been Prado's true soul mate; and the Resistance comrade V"tor Coutinho, who discloses the "evil" act (saving the life of a vicious secret police official) that motivated Prado to forsake the life of the mind for that of a man of violent action. The nearer Gregorius comes to the truth of Prado's passionate commitment, the more insistent becomes the question he asks himself: "Had he perhaps missed a possible life, one he could easily have lived with his abilities and knowledge?" It's the age-old intellectual's dilemma, considered in a compelling blend of suspenseful narrative and discursive commentary (quoted from Prado's text). An intriguing fiction only occasionally diluted by redundancy and by Mercier's overuse of the metaphor of a train journey. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

In Swiss novelist Mercier's U.S. debut, Raimund Gregorius is a gifted but dull 57-year-old high school classical languages teacher in Switzerland. After a chance meeting with a Portuguese woman in the rain, he discovers the work of a Portuguese poet and doctor, Amadeu de Prado, persecuted under Salazar's regime. Transfixed by the work, Gregorius boards a train for Lisbon, bent on discovering Prado's fate and on uncovering more of his work. He returns to the sites of Prado's life and interviews the major players-Prado's sisters, lovers, fellow resistors and estranged best friend-and begins to lose himself. The artful unspooling of Prado's fraught life is richly detailed: full of surprises and paradoxes, it incorporates a vivid rendering of the Portuguese resistance to Salazar. The novel, Mercier's third in Europe, was a blockbuster there. Long philosophical interludes in Prado's voice may not play as well in the U.S., but the book comes through on the enigmas of trying to live and write under fascism. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

TED NORDHAUS and Michael Shellenberger's 2004 essay "The Death of Environmentalism" sparked passionate debate and earned them a reputation as the bad boys of the environmental movement. Judging from their new book, "Break Through," which expands their argument in favor of a new approach to the urgent problem of global warming while continuing to go after former allies with gusto, it's a status they clearly relish. Nordhaus and Shellenberger hold less that environmentalism is dead than that it ought to die. The political strategies that worked against acid rain and smog, they argue, simply will not mobilize support to combat global warming. The problem begins with the very way environmentalists talk about nature. "Environmentalists imagine that Nature, like God, is outside of us and all-powerful," they write in a typical passage. Like church authorities claiming to speak for God, environmentalists claim authority by speaking for nature and translating what the Earth is "telling" us. Throughout the book, Nordhaus and Shellenberger refer to environmentalists in the third person, as if the term doesn't apply to them. In fact, both authors have substantial histories in the movement, for example as advocates for proposals like the New Apollo Project, an ambitious alternative energy plan that has been embraced by the Sierra Club and other mainstream environmental organizations. "Break Through" goes far beyond arguments about the feasibility of hydrogen or wind power, touring such subjects as Thomas Kuhn's revisionist ideas about scientific truth, Richard Rorty's "liberal ironism" and Francis Fukuyama's neo-Hegelian theory of history. Even if one shares the authors' enthusiasm for these subjects, as I do, it seems like a serious mistake to ground a political agenda in ideas like this: "There is no single, glorious and transcendent Science. There are only sciences creating contingent truths, toiling away to reveal, create and organize facts and theories until the next revolutionary paradigm comes along to reorganize entire worlds." Unfortunately, such pretentiousness obscures the book's very real strengths. Nordhaus and Shellenberger have worked in the environmental movement not as grand theorists but as public opinion researchers, and their work in this realm is enormously valuable. Polls often cited as evidence of broad support for environmental goals, they note, also show that support to be extremely shallow, making it difficult to persuade people to give up things they enjoy or need - cheap gasoline, jobs in industries like coal mining or logging - in order to advance environmental ends. In response, environmentalists tend to emphasize the dire consequences of inaction and, when that doesn't work, to ratchet up the doomsday narratives that Nordhaus and Shellenberger justifiably compare to religious tales of sin and damnation. "We know from extensive psychological research," they write, "that presenting frightening disaster scenarios provokes fatalism, paralysis and ... individualistic thoughts of adaptation, not empowerment, hope, creativity and collective action." Insecurity, they argue, is an emotional pillar of reactionary politics, not a building block for the sort of farsighted, progressive thinking that is required to prevent ecological disaster. Instead of sticking with this crucial point, however, "Break Through" tries to use postmodern philosophy to transmute an insight about public opinion into one about public policy. The authors conflate conventional environmentalist rhetoric and conventional policy prescriptions (mandatory curbs on carbon emissions) to create a supposed "politics of limits" that must be transcended through a "politics of possibility." But whatever the shortcomings of their rhetoric, environmentalists have a very good reason to push for some limits, however much of a downer that message might be. Global warming is caused by carbon emissions and can be contained only by reducing them. Nordhaus and Shellenberger's preferred alternative - huge investment in alternative energy - doesn't really stand up to scrutiny. For one thing, without mandatory curbs on emissions, it might not work. For another thing, emissions caps would effectively provide a subsidy to less polluting alternatives, one that would be harder for lobbyists to manipulate and that wouldn't require lawmakers to pick winners among various possible technologies. Finally, even as a matter of crass politics, Nordhaus and Shellenberger neglect a basic point: the hard part about gaining support for a new initiative isn't convincing people of its value but finding the money to pay for it. The conventional solutions to global warming posed by the "politics of limits" - taxing carbon emissions, or issuing tradeable emissions to carbon-producing firms - conveniently raises revenue that could be used to pay for the very projects the authors wish to see. IN truth, few if any environmentalists oppose the sort of alternative-energy projects Nordhaus and Shellenberger favor. "Break Through" is more convincing in its case for a change in rhetoric. Conventional environmentalist policy is perfectly compatible with an optimistic vision of a landscape dotted with windmills and solar panels, of highspeed trains and energy-efficient office towers. But to win, Nordhaus and Shellenberger persuasively argue, environmentalists must stop congratulating themselves for their own willingness to confront inconvenient truths and must focus on building a politics of shared hope rather than relying on a politics of fear. The authors clearly relish their status as the bad boys of the environmental movement. Matthew Yglesias is an associate editor at The Atlantic. His book "Heads in the Sand: How the Republicans Screw Up Foreign Policy and Foreign Policy Screws Up the Democrats" will be published in April.

Raimund Gregorius, a Swiss professor of classical languages, is crossing a rainy bridge in Bern when a mysterious woman writes a phone number on his forehead and utters a single word in Portuguese. Later that day, he wanders into a bookstore and finds himself drawn to a Portuguese book titled A Goldsmith of Words, self-published in Lisbon 30 years earlier. These unexplained and seemingly unrelated events conspire to tear myopic bookworm Gregorius out of his solitary and unvarying existence and send him to Lisbon in search of both the woman and Amadeu de Prado, the book's (fictional) author. This third novel by the pseudonymous Mercier caused a sensation in Europe and spent 140 weeks on the German best-sellers lists, feats unlikely to be duplicated in the United States because of the book's slow pacing. Patient readers will be rewarded, however, by the involving, unpredictable, and well-constructed plot and Mercier's virtuosic orchestration of a large and memorable cast of characters. As the stories of Gregorius and de Prado draw together, this becomes a moving meditation on the defining moments in our lives, the "silent explosions that change everything." Recommended for all fiction collections.--Forest Turner, Suffolk Cty. House of Correction Lib., Boston (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.