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the way Adjei-Brenyah approaches the theme in the two stories, or simply analyze the
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development of the theme in the second one you’ve read.
5. Speaking and Listening. Reviewers have characterized this story as “challenging” because
of the depiction of “difficult aspects of humanity [with] no shortage of gore and visceral
depictions of violence.” Another reviewer argues that the violence is not gratuitous but
“crucially related to both what is happening in America now, and what happened in its bloody
and brutal history.” Develop two or three questions to stimulate a group discussion of the role
of violence in “Friday Black.” Your purpose is not to arrive at a conclusive “answer” but rather
to facilitate deep analysis.
Redefining America
6. Multimodal. “Friday Black” is a fast-paced story, and it’s fair to say that the experience of
reading it is somewhat similar to watching the plot of an action movie unfold. If this story
were made into a film, what would the soundtrack sound like? Select or compose a song that
you think would make a fitting soundtrack for one of the scenes in the story. Explain how your
music contributes to the meaning of that scene.
Parts of this sample chapter have been purposely omitted. Please see full Table of Contents for more information.

2050: How Earth Survived

Bill McKibben

Author of more than a dozen books about the environment,
Bill McKibben (b. 1960) grew up in Massachusetts and
attended Harvard University, where he was president of the
Harvard Crimson newspaper. After college he joined the New
Yorker, where he was a staff writer until 1987. His first book,
The End of Nature, was published in 1989, and is regarded as Pascal Perich/Getty Images
the first book about climate change for a general audience.
Among McKibben’s other books are Long Distance: Testing
the Limits of Body and Spirit in a Year of Living Strenuously
(2000), Earth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet (2010), Falter: Has the Human Game Begun
to Play Itself Out? (2019) and the novel Radio Free Vermont: A Fable of Resistance (2017). Time
magazine has called McKibben “the planet’s best green journalist,” and the Boston Globe has
said that he is “probably the country’s most important environmentalist.”

KEY CONTEXT “2050: How Earth Survived” was the cover story for a Time Magazine special issue on
climate change in September 2019. The subtitle was “Hello from the Year 2050: We Avoided the Worst of
Climate Change — But Everything Is Different.” McKibben writes as if looking back from the year 2050,
so his references to policy and lifestyle changes that occurred in 2020 and later were speculative.

et’s imagine for a moment that we’ve reached mirror. And so we can look back to see how we
Lthe middle of the century. It’s 2050, and we might have managed to dramatically change our
have a moment to reflect — the climate fight society and economy. We had no other choice.
remains the consuming battle of our age, but There was a point after 2020 when we began
its most intense phase may be in our rearview to collectively realize a few basic things.
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Copyright © 2021 by Bedford, Freeman & Worth High School Publishers. Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample chapter.
Distributed by by Bedford, Freeman & Worth High School Publishers. Strictly for use with its products. Not for redistribution.

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