A useful summary account of “a rigorous political philosophy and mode of direct political engagement that provides an...
A scholar refocuses the issue from “not racist” to “antiracist” and from white to black.
“Prevailing cultural and academic understandings of antiracism typically focus on white Americans,” writes Zamalin (Political Science and African-American Studies/Univ. of Detroit Mercy; African American Political Thought and American Culture: The Nation’s Struggle for Racial Justice, 2015, etc.), “at the expense of those who have offered the most sustained critique of what racism is and how to dismantle it: black Americans.” Though patience may not be a virtue for those who have struggled too long for too little recompense, this book has more of the measured tone of an introduction to the notion of antiracism rather than the polemical urgency of a manifesto. The author provides valuable historical context on the social construct of racial identity, the structural construct of institutional racism, the global reach of the antiracist mission, and the struggles that have persisted from the Declaration of Independence through the abolitionist movement and the Civil War, through the issues of employment and education, and through the back-to-back elections of presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump. Regarding Obama, writes Zamalin, “an important antiracist opportunity was…lost throughout his presidency. The participatory democratic energy that got him into office was never sustained.” The Obama years saw the initial stirrings of the Black Lives Matter movement—the author gives him credit for not repudiating it or distancing himself—alongside the polarization that led to the Trump backlash. Zamalin’s vision is pragmatic with a touch of idealism. He doesn’t necessarily place moral superiority on nonviolence over more militant tactics, and he recognizes that black rebellion intensifies resistance from a conservative status quo. As he insists throughout, it is not enough to believe that you are not racist; you must actively work against racism in all its institutional and insidious forms.
A useful summary account of “a rigorous political philosophy and mode of direct political engagement that provides an exemplary model for tackling racism in all forms.”Pub Date: March 19, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4798-2263-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: New York Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 25, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
PERSPECTIVES
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
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