A handy guide to the uses and abuses of capitalism.
A concise, well-researched argument against the dangers of unregulated capitalism.
In this brief but informative book, Gaasvig argues that America is a democracy only in name. “When any nation evolves to the point where the government and a majority of the wealth of the nation are concentrated in the hands of less than 1 percent of the population, no longer is that nation a democracy,” he says. In the age of the Occupy movement, that view isn’t exactly novel; indeed, many of the points made here will be familiar to even apolitical readers, anchored as those arguments are in the author’s standard progressive belief that unfettered capitalism is causing a divide in this country between the haves and the have-nots—a division, the author says, that is both morally and economically suspect. What makes this book unique, however, is its orderly, educational tone. In what amounts to a clear-cut guide to social democracy, Gaasvig makes both economically and politically based suggestions for how to rectify the situation. As for the former, he recommends a range of initiatives, from publically funded child care to nearly guaranteed employment to what he calls a “three-party economic partnership” among capitalists, workers and the government. Politically, he suggests disbanding the Electoral College system and imposing term limits on members of Congress, among many other ideas. He also writes eloquently about voting and education. Critics may accuse Gaasvig of touting pipe dreams, but he clearly knows his stuff. With even the most idealistic of his ideas—say, the implementation of full employment with livings wages and benefits—he actively addresses opposing views in a controlled, logical way. And he is not unaware of the task ahead, particularly when it comes to inspiring the masses to be involved in the process. However, it’s debatable whether the book will appeal to the American “majority” he references throughout, since this fairly erudite work can at times be a repetitive read. Nevertheless, for students of political and economic theory, it will serve as a factual, well-composed dissection of an extremely important topic.
A handy guide to the uses and abuses of capitalism.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2013
ISBN: 978-1483980492
Page Count: 234
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 24, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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