A thoughtful, if not always entirely clear, account of the State of Israel.
A sweeping reflection on the dangers posed to Israel by moral decline, and some possible solutions.
Political discussion about Israel tends to revolve around its dispute with Palestine, comparatively neglecting the nation’s domestic health. In his debut effort, Bernstein begins by offering an appraisal of Israel’s internal integrity, which he characterizes as being in dire straits. After the elimination of the gold standard, he says, corporate greed was untethered from any restraints, generating a predatory culture of consumption. He asserts that corporations gradually edged out government and civil society as the principal agents of influence, aggressively privatized historically public functions, and remade the media—and even national armies—into agents of their prosperity. Bernstein considers the conflict between a morally robust populace and corporate avarice to be the central issue of our time, and not just for Israel. In addition to issuing gloomy prognostications, he proposes a number of broadly articulated solutions; he contends that education, religion, and a preservation of culture could all function as counterpoints to crass consumerism. Originally written as a series of essays, this book also covers a number of other issues, including the nature of Zionism, the need for a newly constituted Israeli leadership, and a novel solution to the seemingly endless Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Although this tour of Israeli issues can sometimes seem a bit scattershot, each essay is essentially self-sufficient and enlivened with provocation; Bernstein’s federalist solution to the conflict with Palestine alone makes the book a worthwhile read. The prose, though, can sometimes take turgid turns, and the author, despite his general moderation, is prone to occasional bouts of enthusiastic hyperbole (“The future of humanity depends on its ability to escape the tyranny of the greedy capitalistic elite who control the corporations”). Also, the brevity of the essays means that the arguments unfold more quickly than persuasively at some points, and without clear explanations of political and cultural references for nonexperts. However, the author is admirably straightforward about his political commitments and unafraid to furnish unconventional analyses.
A thoughtful, if not always entirely clear, account of the State of Israel.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5002-9837-1
Page Count: 136
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: April 8, 2016
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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