by Alex Perry ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 6, 2011
The near-success story of one man’s fight to control malaria in Africa, related by Time Africa bureau chief Perry (Falling Off the Edge: Travels Through the Dark Heart of Globalization, 2008).
That man is Ray Chambers, a self-made millionaire for whom money was distinctly not everything, but who discovered that helping the poor, especially children dying of malaria in Africa, would be the most satisfying thing he could do. Thus was born the idea of distributing insecticide-treated bed nets in sub-Saharan Africa. Though it wasn’t a new idea, Chambers adopted the business model that had worked for him on Wall Street, leveraging funding from multiple sources and specifying targets and timelines. A major key was Chambers’ ability to sweet-talk transnational corporations into becoming funders, noting that it was in their own self-interest to support bed nets, thus reducing absenteeism and improving workers’ health and morale. Starting in 2009, Chambers’ target was 300 million nets, reaching 600 million people by the end of 2010. He came close, but the target grew; however, he succeeded in getting the goods, just not in time. The Chambers story must be told, Perry writes, especially in light of the gloom-and-doom saying of so many NGOs and government agencies who were often critical—and whom the author takes to task for inertia, if not downright lying in their fundraising efforts). Perry bookends the text with before and after visits to Apac, Uganda, a hopeless malarial hell before the Chambers campaign. The author cites impressive data on disease reduction, clinic-building, etc., but there are still questions: How do you sustain disease control, teach proper net use and replace nets when they wear out. What happens when insecticide resistance develops? How do you coordinate control programs with vaccine and drug development in a continent beset by corruption, scandal, poverty, tribal war and massive refugee movements? In that light, Chambers’ story is the most upbeat to date—almost emblematic of the old adage, “where there’s a will there’s a way.”
Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-61039-086-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2011
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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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