by Isabel Kershner ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 11, 2005
“Fences have so far not made for good neighbors,” Kershner concludes. A revealing report.
Border walls are nothing new. But whereas some have come tumbling down in recent years, one is rising in Israel—and, as with most things there, is a source of conflict.
Jerusalem Report editor Kershner travels the 375-mile length of the barrier separating the Palestinians of the West Bank from their Israeli neighbors, reporting on what she finds along the way, little of it cause for hope. The barrier, mostly of wire fence but also of concrete and steel, divides land and people. Palestinians regard it as “a new blight on the landscape,” proof of apartheid and their unwelcome status in the new Israel. Israeli Arabs tend to favor the fence, “believing it to provide the clearest definition yet of their permanent status as citizens of the state.” And, by Kershner’s account, Israelis of left and right see the need for the barrier as a deterrent to terrorism, and particularly suicide bombers, although thus far it has not proved very effective. There are other reasons for it; says one thoughtful kibbutzim, “We need a fence . . . to put limits on the occupation in the Jewish mind.” The need for such a wall is debatable, Kershner suggests, but building it has been a priority for the government of Ariel Sharon, who ordered that the fence not follow the Green Line marking Israel’s 1967 border, as he had promised; instead, it zigzags in and out of Palestinian territory, even cutting off some Palestinian villages while protecting Israeli settler communities on the West Bank. One such instance, Kershner writes, “became a showcase of Israeli irrationality at home and abroad” when the barrier—built at a cost of about $3 million per mile—was pulled down and relocated on the Green Line. Other portions still mark not that line, however, but what Kershner calls the “seam zone” between Israelis and Palestinians.
“Fences have so far not made for good neighbors,” Kershner concludes. A revealing report.Pub Date: Dec. 11, 2005
ISBN: 1-4039-6801-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2005
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by Paul Kalanithi ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 19, 2016
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
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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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by Abhijit V. Banerjee & Esther Duflo ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 12, 2019
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
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