by Alfredo Corchado ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 19, 2018
An affecting, timely book that would have benefited from tighter editing and a less scattered narrative structure.
A mix of memoir and deep research into various Mexican and American political immigration issues, exploring complications of life on both sides of the border.
Although the narrative is wide-ranging, Corchado (Midnight in Mexico: A Reporter’s Journey Through a Country’s Descent into Darkness, 2013), the Border-Mexico correspondent for the Dallas Morning News, organizes it loosely around the “four friends” of the title: the author, a Mexican-born, mostly U.S.–educated journalist; a Mexican-born immigrant owner of a Mexican restaurant in Philadelphia; a Mexican-born political activist splitting time between the neighboring nations; and a politically connected lawyer born as a U.S. citizen in the state of New Mexico. In 1987, during the early years of their careers, the four men, feeling isolated in Philadelphia, met and discussed their life situations, and they never lost touch. The saga of each man is intriguing, but the narrative is least compelling when Corchado devotes too much space to his companions. The book is most compelling when he focuses on the memoir part of the story, including how his parents reluctantly departed Mexico hoping to find a richer life north of the border. A secondary, equally compelling narrative involves Corchado’s evolution as a journalist. Studying the subject at a geographically remote university in El Paso, Texas, the author never dreamed that his talent and ethnic diversity would lead to employment at the Philadelphia bureau of the Wall Street Journal. Because Corchado’s professional passion centered on illuminating life along the U.S.–Mexico border, he left the Journal for his dream assignment at the Morning News. (He would go on to earn multiple prizes and fellowships for his work.) Naturally, given the devastating narcotics-related violence in both nations, the author offers insights into drug policy, which is intimately tied into border security and both legal and illegal immigration.
An affecting, timely book that would have benefited from tighter editing and a less scattered narrative structure.Pub Date: June 19, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-63286-554-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Feb. 4, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
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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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