Learned and well-considered, but if indeed Western liberal values are in danger of extinction, readers may seek more urgency.
Trump, Putin, Kim, Xi: given the current lineup, can the ideals of the Enlightenment endure?
Authoritarianism is in the ascendant everywhere in the Western world, with Marine Le Pen gaining momentum in France and, of course, Donald Trump becoming president in the United States. But these, Financial Times Washington commentator Luce (Time to Start Thinking: America in the Age of Descent, 2012, etc.) observes, are symptoms of a greater decline. In a trajectory of liberalism that the author traces to the Magna Carta in 1215 and that reigns nearly supreme in 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the forces of liberty, equality, and fraternity have splintered, while “belief in an authoritarian version of national destiny is staging a powerful comeback.” Luce’s case is long on description and laced with useful data—e.g., given that an iPhone is made in nine different countries, Trump’s nationalist rejection of trade agreements is both anachronistic and stupid, the more so because—and this is a contentious claim on Luce’s part—China is likely to outstrip the U.S. economically in the very near term. China is not the only challenge. The greater danger to the American middle class, writes the author, is artificial intelligence, a machine-driven global capitalism without much regard for the “enlightened self-interest that defined much of postwar America” until the last election. Luce’s argument, though meritorious, lacks much rhetorical fire; in the hands of a Francis Fukuyama or Jacques Barzun on the right or a Christopher Lasch or Bernard-Henri Lévy on the left, it might have been more memorably delivered and with more prescription to leaven the description. Still, there are some nicely pithy moments, including his parting shot: “Liberal elites, in particular, will have to resist the temptation to carry on with their comfortable lives and imagine they are doing their part by signing up to the occasional Facebook protest.”
Learned and well-considered, but if indeed Western liberal values are in danger of extinction, readers may seek more urgency.Pub Date: June 13, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-8021-2739-6
Page Count: 232
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: April 17, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
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