A sober, intelligent study of the changing dynamics of a womens prison. The Connecticut Correctional Institute in Niantic, nicknamed ``The Farm'' by its inmates, has a long and honorable tradition. Its prisoners historically grew their own vegetables and cared for farm animals; the prison is located in a lovely rural spot. Rierden (Journalism/Fairfield Univ.) studied the inmates from 1992 to 1995, as the prison population began to shift from one-time offenders to serious repeat offenders, some with AIDS, many with serious drug problems. Rierden's narrative focuses on several older inmates, including Delia Robinson, a matronly woman with a violent streak triggered by alcohol. Robinson had spent long stretches in Niantic, the first when she killed another woman, the second after she killed her abusive son. It takes Robinson years to admit her alcoholism and her responsibility for her sons depraved, short life. Its to Rierdens credit that the reader understands why the other inmates revere the woman they call Miss D; her slow emergence from the prison system takes on heroic proportions. Other inmates are of more questionable character; unlike Delia, Bonnie Foreshaw vehemently denies she murdered a pregnant woman and blames race bias for a conviction in what she insists was an accidental shooting. Rierden reports without comment Bonnie's exculpatory account along with those of several eyewitnesses, who tell a far different story. Niantic is, as Rierden reports, the object of much interest, both as a model for the old-style system of reforming prisoners and as a relic in a new era showing much less interest in rehabilitation. Bucking that trend, largely through the efforts of longtime guards and a thoughtful warden, a drug rehabilitation center has been established, and the prison itself has been restored to much of its old glory as a farm for damaged people. An intelligent, absorbing look at prison reform and, more particularly, at the issue of women in prison.
Pub Date: June 1, 1997
ISBN: 1-55849-079-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1997
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
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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