A thoughtful contribution to the literature of humanitarian aid.
Scholarly examination of the politics and economics of displacement.
Oxford professor Betts, a specialist in “forced migration,” opens by noting that the number of refugees and internally displaced people—i.e., those who remain in their homeland but not in their homes—is vast and likely to grow “due to a proliferation in the number of fragile states.” These states are made fragile both by internal political and economic failings and by external forces such as war, pandemic, and climate change. Two principal examples of nations affected by numerous forces at once are Syria and Venezuela, which have seen huge outflows of people. As Betts argues, one effective means of dealing with the problem of displacement is to apply remedies at home, with the wealthy nations providing aid to poorer ones so that their peoples have less need to go elsewhere—a win for both those poorer nations and wealthier ones in Europe and North America that are less and less inclined to take in large numbers of immigrants. The author calls for programs of infrastructure development and job creation as well as enlisting developed neighbors in a “high degree of specialization,” with those nearby states providing regions of refuge and “sustainable sanctuaries” given that those neighbors are likely to share cultural similarities that would allow for easier assimilation. Betts highlights Uganda as a case study of a place where refugees are allowed to settle and to engage fully in the outside economy, which has mostly good effects though some perhaps unintended consequences as well (Idi Amin drew support from those refugees to shore up a regime that oppressed native Ugandans). Given nationalist tendencies around the world, Betts notes, the Ugandan model may be difficult to apply. “In the short term, amid global recession,” he writes, “the willingness of publics and politicians to share scarce resources with distant strangers will be tested to [the] breaking point.”
A thoughtful contribution to the literature of humanitarian aid.Pub Date: June 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-19-887068-5
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
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
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