by Mary Papenfuss ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 11, 2013
Informative, provocative, and challenging in a way that belies its somewhat silly title, this book is a must-read for those...
A former crime reporter takes on the unthinkable topic of men who murder their own children in this book that melds true crime, anthropology, and issues of social justice.
Papenfuss (Climb Against the Odds, 2013) presents five main crimes, offering them variously as examples of a specific type of killer or killing: those that are driven by either a sense of rage or a perverse sense of protectiveness, “family annihilations,” a cult-like level of control gone haywire, straight-up sociopathy (this the case of Scott and Laci Peterson, which the author covered for the New York Daily News), and so-called “honor killings.” The descriptions—interspersed with briefer examples of equally horrific crimes—are detailed and graphic, the writing bordering on sensationalistic in a way that will both titillate and disturb. Papenfuss takes a more intellectual tone in her early chapters about the evolutionary and social underpinnings of male violence against family members, which provide a fascinating subtext for the subsequent analyses of specific crimes. From Langur monkeys in India, to fairy tales and Shakespearian dramas about dysfunctional step-parent relationships, to mass family murders in early America, she argues convincingly that infanticide is not the shocking aberration we would like to think it is, but it is rather, to some degree, encoded into our biology and culture. She supports this hypothesis with a barrage of statistics (which, while compelling, hamper her readability) and points out problems within the law enforcement, social welfare, and criminal justice systems that impede our ability to evolve beyond the brutality of our primitive selves. Papenfuss’s progressive slant is apparent, as she may very well intend it to be—she quotes several activists and system insiders who argue that meaningful reform will require government funds that are now, they say, being misdirected [234-235]—but for the most part she does not speak in platitudes, and she effectively outlines the complexity of the problem and the elusiveness of solutions. She deftly handles, for instance, the politically-charged issue of Islamic “honor killings” in the case of murdered Dearborn, Michigan, teen Jessica Mokdad, and in her concluding chapter she admits, “I assumed when I got to the end of my book, some solutions to the problem of fathers killing children would be obvious. They weren’t.” [234]
Informative, provocative, and challenging in a way that belies its somewhat silly title, this book is a must-read for those interested in criminal psychology and issues of domestic violence.Pub Date: June 11, 2013
ISBN: 978-1616147433
Page Count: 275
Publisher: Prometheus Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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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