by Adam Pitluk ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 15, 2007
Comprehensive but halfhearted.
Meandering examination of a ne’er-do-well blamed for a levee break during the Midwestern floods of 1993.
After several months of steady rain, West Quincy, Mo., was literally sinking. Community members combined their efforts with the National Guard to strengthen the levee protecting the area from the Mississippi River’s rising waters. Joining the ranks of levee workers, Jimmy Scott believed, would relieve him of his miserable shifts cleaning grease bins at the local Burger King. An irresponsible boozer, Scott often skipped sandbagging under the hot sun in favor of a few beers in the shade. Nonetheless, he did notice a trouble spot in the levee one day and reported it; some eight hours later, the levee broke. At this point, Pitluk (Standing Eight: The Inspiring Story of Jesus “El Matador” Chavez, Who Became Lightweight Champion of the World, 2006) turns back to exhaustively detail Scott’s childhood in West Quincy. His penchant for mischievous “clandestine midnight missions” around the neighborhood with his two brothers was remembered by police when they scoured for suspects in a fire that burned down Webster Elementary School in 1982. Twelve-year-old Jimmy admitted his guilt and was sentenced to a few months in a youth home. A mental-health evaluation diagnosed mild depression and hyperactivity/attention deficit disorder. Shunned by the community after his release, he went on to spend his youth in and out of detention facilities on a variety of arson charges. In 1993, as word spread about the levee break, the town quickly cast former “miscreant” Scott as a saboteur. He maintained his innocence, but authorities, townsfolk and even Scott’s friends believed otherwise. A jury found him guilty of intentionally causing a catastrophe, and he was sentenced to life in prison. “I’ve never meant to assign guilt or innocence,” writes Pitluk. “It is my intention that the reader form his/her own opinion.” Lacking passionate conviction either way, however, his book may have a difficult time finding an audience.
Comprehensive but halfhearted.Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-306-81527-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Da Capo
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2007
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by Adam Pitluk
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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