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
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
SEEN & HEARD
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.
Known for her often contentious perspectives, New York Times opinion writer Weiss battles societal Jewish intolerance through lucid prose and a linear playbook of remedies.
While she was vividly aware of anti-Semitism throughout her life, the reality of the problem hit home when an active shooter stormed a Pittsburgh synagogue where her family regularly met for morning services and where she became a bat mitzvah years earlier. The massacre that ensued there further spurred her outrage and passionate activism. She writes that European Jews face a three-pronged threat in contemporary society, where physical, moral, and political fears of mounting violence are putting their general safety in jeopardy. She believes that Americans live in an era when “the lunatic fringe has gone mainstream” and Jews have been forced to become “a people apart.” With palpable frustration, she adroitly assesses the origins of anti-Semitism and how its prevalence is increasing through more discreet portals such as internet self-radicalization. Furthermore, the erosion of civility and tolerance and the demonization of minorities continue via the “casual racism” of political figures like Donald Trump. Following densely political discourses on Zionism and radical Islam, the author offers a list of bullet-point solutions focused on using behavioral and personal action items—individual accountability, active involvement, building community, loving neighbors, etc.—to help stem the tide of anti-Semitism. Weiss sounds a clarion call to Jewish readers who share her growing angst as well as non-Jewish Americans who wish to arm themselves with the knowledge and intellectual tools to combat marginalization and defuse and disavow trends of dehumanizing behavior. “Call it out,” she writes. “Especially when it’s hard.” At the core of the text is the author’s concern for the health and safety of American citizens, and she encourages anyone “who loves freedom and seeks to protect it” to join with her in vigorous activism.
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-593-13605-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2019
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