Provocative work from an incisive critic who occasionally waxes unblushingly utopian.
Should “postwar” Iraq evolve from shooting gallery to mother of all quagmires, Bush & Co. will be able to ponder ornately posited reasons why in this latest from liberal political scientist Barber.
Abundantly sourced and annotated—note Harry Truman’s haunting aphorism that “the only thing you prevent by going to war is peace”—this volume aims to expose all the traps in the administration’s concept of unilateralism as applied to the once and possibly future Saddam Hussein, including familiar ones now being given increased airplay: compounded unpredictability; the shedding of allies and loss of world esteem as a result of flouting international law and democratic principle; and the pinning of a target on the US as an imperialistic aggressor. These traps are all endemic, Barber (Jihad vs. McWorld, 1995) reminds us, in parts of the world where lines already form at terrorism’s door. The author characterizes President Bush as decisive but tragically intolerant of complexity. Further, he asserts, by basing both domestic and foreign policies primarily on fear (including threat of war) we let terrorists “whose only weapon is fear win without firing a shot.” The more original parts here examine the variations in extant democracies to support the author’s claim that exporting instant “American democracy” is futile and will inevitably be perceived as a threat to embedded religious cultures. Rooted democratic governments need to evolve from within and, crucially, over time, Barber argues, but the idea that Islam cannot tolerate them is simply false, as witness Turkey, Indonesia, etc. (Hardly great democratic examples, but no worse than most of Latin America.) While this is largely a statement of problems, Barber devotes a section to wishfully extolling a policy of “preventive democracy” based firmly on multilateralism in this “age of interdependence” and on international law as the best way to avoid potential future entanglements in Iran, North Korea, Syria, ad infinitum.
Provocative work from an incisive critic who occasionally waxes unblushingly utopian.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-393-05836-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2003
A wondrous mix of races, ages, genders, and social classes, and on virtually every page is a surprise.
Photographer and author Stanton returns with a companion volume to Humans of New York (2013), this one with similarly affecting photographs of New Yorkers but also with some tales from his subjects’ mouths.
Readers of the first volume—and followers of the related site on Facebook and elsewhere—will feel immediately at home. The author has continued to photograph the human zoo: folks out in the streets and in the parks, in moods ranging from parade-happy to deep despair. He includes one running feature—“Today in Microfashion,” which shows images of little children dressed up in various arresting ways. He also provides some juxtapositions, images and/or stories that are related somehow. These range from surprising to forced to barely tolerable. One shows a man with a cat on his head and a woman with a large flowered headpiece, another a construction worker proud of his body and, on the facing page, a man in a wheelchair. The emotions course along the entire continuum of human passion: love, broken love, elation, depression, playfulness, argumentativeness, madness, arrogance, humility, pride, frustration, and confusion. We see varieties of the human costume, as well, from formalwear to homeless-wear. A few celebrities appear, President Barack Obama among them. The “stories” range from single-sentence comments and quips and complaints to more lengthy tales (none longer than a couple of pages). People talk about abusive parents, exes, struggles to succeed, addiction and recovery, dramatic failures, and lifelong happiness. Some deliver minirants (a neuroscientist is especially curmudgeonly), and the children often provide the most (often unintended) humor. One little boy with a fishing pole talks about a monster fish. Toward the end, the images seem to lead us toward hope. But then…a final photograph turns the light out once again.
A wondrous mix of races, ages, genders, and social classes, and on virtually every page is a surprise.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-05890-4
Page Count: 432
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2015
A welcome addition to the literature on immigration told by an author who understands the issue like few others.
The debut book from “one of the first undocumented immigrants to graduate from Harvard.”
In addition to delivering memorable portraits of undocumented immigrants residing precariously on Staten Island and in Miami, Cleveland, Flint, and New Haven, Cornejo Villavicencio, now enrolled in the American Studies doctorate program at Yale, shares her own Ecuadorian family story (she came to the U.S. at age 5) and her anger at the exploitation of hardworking immigrants in the U.S. Because the author fully comprehends the perils of undocumented immigrants speaking to journalist, she wisely built trust slowly with her subjects. Her own undocumented status helped the cause, as did her Spanish fluency. Still, she protects those who talked to her by changing their names and other personal information. Consequently, readers must trust implicitly that the author doesn’t invent or embellish. But as she notes, “this book is not a traditional nonfiction book….I took notes by hand during interviews and after the book was finished, I destroyed those notes.” Recounting her travels to the sites where undocumented women, men, and children struggle to live above the poverty line, she reports her findings in compelling, often heart-wrenching vignettes. Cornejo Villavicencio clearly shows how employers often cheat day laborers out of hard-earned wages, and policymakers and law enforcement agents exist primarily to harm rather than assist immigrants who look and speak differently. Often, cruelty arrives not only in economic terms, but also via verbal slurs and even violence. Throughout the narrative, the author explores her own psychological struggles, including her relationships with her parents, who are considered “illegal” in the nation where they have worked hard and tried to become model residents. In some of the most deeply revealing passages, Cornejo Villavicencio chronicles her struggles reconciling her desire to help undocumented children with the knowledge that she does not want "kids of my own." Ultimately, the author’s candor about herself removes worries about the credibility of her stories.
A welcome addition to the literature on immigration told by an author who understands the issue like few others.Pub Date: May 19, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-399-59268-3
Page Count: 208
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: Jan. 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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