An excellent resource on terrorism for professionals and lay readers alike.
A scholarly but accessible analysis of young terrorists that draws on behavioral and social science.
In this book, LoCicero (Creating Young Martyrs, 2008) explores the complex interplay of personal and cultural factors that produces terrorists. She particularly focuses on the two men who were accused of carrying out the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing while also surveying the spectrum of youth violence in America. Along the way, she blends in her own perspective on the attack, which was in her hometown, with her experience as a clinical psychologist studying traumatized youth worldwide. The title reflects the dissonance between Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s alleged deeds and the seemingly “normal American kids” that their friends, teachers and neighbors thought they knew. LoCicero convincingly shows that the brothers fit a pattern of young immigrants caught between conflicting identities and loyalties who become susceptible to extremism after personal crises, parental loss or neglect, drug abuse or financial setbacks. She devotes an entire chapter to how terrorist organizations recruit such people, arguing that behind every child soldier or young terrorist, there’s an adult recruiter who profits. Her prescription for preventing terrorism is to short-circuit such recruitment—first, by improving dialogue and engagement with young people, and second, by reducing the social injustice and conflicts worldwide that breed grievances. Hard-liners may equate trying to understand terrorists with excusing their actions, but the author reasons that simply labeling them evil or insane, and relying on incarceration or assassination, does little to prevent future acts. LoCicero often makes her case with great clarity and precision. Sometimes, however, there’s needless repetition; for example, she reminds readers eight times that the boat on which Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was caught was docked in Watertown, Massachusetts. On the other hand, she also constructs her arguments in ways that any layman can understand. The superbly researched, clearly cited book provides a wealth of resources for further reading. LoCicero’s stated goal for her book is “to reduce terrorism and reduce prejudice against foreign-born, young Americans, simultaneously.” That’s a tall order, perhaps beyond the reach of a single work, but she has made a significant contribution to the cause.
An excellent resource on terrorism for professionals and lay readers alike.Pub Date: July 29, 2014
ISBN: 978-1440831881
Page Count: 178
Publisher: Praeger
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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