An invigorating book with much fodder for thought on this side of the Atlantic.
Vigorous polemic on the makeup of England’s ruling elite, with eerie parallels to the inequality in the United States.
Guardian columnist Jones (Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class, 2012) embarks on another scathing examination of British systemic ailments by directly challenging the powerful interest groups that essentially rule the country. Politicians, financial titans, media barons, and an authoritative police force form the pillars of society, and since the 1950s, when Britain collectively shook off the “defeatism” and “permissiveness” of the postwar era in order to embrace an “open economy,” these pillars have turned increasingly reactionary. Where once the aristocracy and Church of England formed the Establishment (both still hold enormous tracts of land, the author notes), the “outriders” who championed the return to laissez faire economics at the Mont Pelerin Society of 1947 (Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman et al.) got their deliverance with the accession of Margaret Thatcher in the 1970s. They forged a new Establishment, founded on free market principles and libertarian philosophy. In the U.S. under Ronald Reagan, that philosophy was reflected in the attempt to roll back FDR’s New Deal and LBJ’s Great Society programs. Jones looks at the role of conservative think tanks, such as the powerful Institute of Economic Affairs, in launching an all-out offensive on the working class, the trade unions, and the “little people.” This offensive often goes hand in hand with a 24-hour news cycle that popularizes their ideas to the public. In successive chapters, the author tackles one pillar after the other: the “Westminster Cartel”; a dishonest, corporate-fed media playing into racism and other prejudices (e.g., the Rupert Murdoch press); the “boys in blue,” who are authorized to use unlawful force; and tax dodgers and financiers operating with impunity. The supreme irony, Jones emphasizes, is that these “free-market” pillars actually derive their power from the “largesse of the state.”
An invigorating book with much fodder for thought on this side of the Atlantic.Pub Date: April 21, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-61219-487-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Melville House
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2015
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
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