The book lacks the conviction or mastery of style to be very interesting There’s a scene in Evelyn Waugh’s The Loved One in which a magazine’s advice columnist “the Guru Brahmin” (in fact “two gloomy men and a bright young secretary”) receives yet another letter from a compulsive nail-biter: “What did we advise her last time?” Mr. Slump, the chain-smoking drunk, asks. “Meditation on the Beautiful.” “Well, tell her to go on meditating.” The opening of Paul Hawken’s Carbon gives the impression