Short takes

In “Sexing the Pheasant,’’ the deliciously arch story that opens this collection, Madonna, in her exhaustively rehearsed trouser role of British country squire, responds with mixed emotions when a game bird at which she has taken aim lands at her feet. “She had shot it, certainly, with her gun. . . . But she had not expected the actual death thing.’’ Realizing that the bird has not quite expired, she considers her options. “She should step on its little head and crunch it. But the boots were Prada.’’

The animal/human interface plays a role in each of these intriguing fictions, and the human in question is often an eminent one. In the lightly satirical “Chomsky, Rodents,’’ a man is stunned to come across Noam Chomsky at a Cape Cod dump gamely trying to find a taker for a used gerbil cage, while in the emotionally harrowing title story, the scientist on whose well-known research the fiction is based must drag himself through days as empty inside as the cloth and wire surrogate of his experiments.

Wry one moment, chilling the next, Lydia Millet’s finely crafted stories suggest deep pools of meaning beneath each brilliant surface.

HAVE A LITTLE FAITH:
A True Story
By Mitch Albom
Hyperion, 272 pp., $23.99

Doubling down on the bet that paid off handsomely in “Tuesdays with Morrie,’’ Mitch Albom offers “Have a Little Faith,’’ which recounts the friendships he cultivated with two very different men of God.

On one of his annual High Holidays visits to his New Jersey hometown, Albom was astonished when Albert Lewis, the rabbi he had known since boyhood, requested a favor of him: Would Albom speak at his funeral? Although the event was not imminent, Albom agreed, and over the years, visiting frequently from his home in Detroit, came to know the older man not simply as a respected clergyman but as a good-natured father figure and a guide to a spiritual confidence the writer found lacking in his own life. At the same time, back in Detroit, he became acquainted with Henry Covington, ex-con and pastor of a poverty-stricken African American church, whose faith in the face of hardship left Albom humbled.

Readers primed to be touched by such stories will deem the book a success; those who prefer some art with their uplift, a little less so.

NOW OR NEVER: Why We Must Act Now to End
Climate Change and Create a Sustainable Future
By Tim Flannery
Atlantic Monthly, 176 pp., $18

Pity the poor climate scientist. His work exposes him to the direst of global forecasts, but whenever he tries to sound the alarm, he’s treated like a lunatic patrolling the pavement with a sign reading “The End Is Near!’’

The Australian scientist and environmental activist Tim Flannery sets out to show, in the words of his subtitle, “why we must act now to end climate change and create a sustainable future.’’ Assuming that general ignorance is the first barrier to attacking the problem, he offers a quick remedial course on earth science, lucidly summarizing the workings of the oceans, forests, and ice caps. From there he moves on to lessons of another sort, indicting the single-mindedness of corporations and the cowardice and cynicism of politicians.

The bottom line, says Flannery, is that there are too many people on this planet to go on feeding, housing, and transporting us all in the same carbon-extravagant fashion without committing global suicide. Switching to more sustainable practices is not a pipe dream. He documents places - from US farms to tropical rainforests to the highways of Denmark - where positive change is already underway. His understated approach inspires confidence, though he clearly hopes to inspire more than that.