A well-researched, sobering view of the damage that Americans’ need to get high wreaks on our neighbors.
A decadeslong survey of the Mexican drug trade and the myths surrounding it.
The pipelines that bring illicit narcotics from Mexico have been flowing since the late 19th century, writes historian Smith, a time when “between 2 and 4 percent of the U.S. population was addicted to morphine.” A century later, “America was consuming up to 70 percent of all the world’s cocaine.” Some of the myths that have arisen paint the drug trade as an evil assault on an innocent America, perpetuated by the worst of humankind against a cadre of honest cops, a tide that provides “the essential background for the upsurge in U.S. nativism, the expansion of a massive deportation industry, and the popularity of Trump’s demands for a wall.” The truth is more nuanced, but it centers on economics. Without the ever voracious American market, there would be no drug trade—and the current trend toward legalizing at least marijuana and the decline in cocaine consumption are forcing the trade into new product lines, including fentanyl, methamphetamine, and opioids. Meanwhile, writes Smith, the drug trade was long intertwined with the Mexican state; since almost all of the traffic passed through to the north, who would object to politicians skimming off the top? But the politicians have given way to the drug traffickers themselves, who now “decide the rules of the game,” which Smith describes as “state capture.” With a few exceptions (such the Sinaloa cartel kingpin Chapo Guzmán), the bosses escape punishment even as the trade has turned increasingly violent. Smith does a fine job of piecing all these elements together, showing how the American market led to the boom of border towns such as the once-sleepy hamlet of Tijuana and how hard-line anti-drug policies do not bring down consumption rates. Meanwhile, the tens of thousands of dead and disappeared in Mexico, collateral damage of the drug war, can be laid at the door of the U.S.—where, as Smith notes, the guns that the gangsters employ come from.
A well-researched, sobering view of the damage that Americans’ need to get high wreaks on our neighbors.Pub Date: Aug. 10, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-324-00655-8
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2021
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
The best book yet written on India in the throes of a brutal transition.
In her debut, Pulitzer Prize–winning New Yorker staff writer Boo creates an intimate, unforgettable portrait of India’s urban poor.
Mumbai’s sparkling new airport and surrounding luxury hotels welcome visitors to the globalized, privatized, competitive India. Across the highway, on top of tons of garbage and next to a vast pool of sewage, lies the slum of Annawadi, one of many such places that house the millions of poor of Mumbai. For more than three years, Boo lived among and learned from the residents, observing their struggles and quarrels, listening to their dreams and despair, recording it all. She came away with a detailed portrait of individuals daring to aspire but too often denied a chance—their lives viewed as an embarrassment to the modernized wealthy. The author poignantly details these many lives: Abdul, a quiet buyer of recyclable trash who wished for nothing more than what he had; Zehrunisa, Abdul’s mother, a Muslim matriarch among hostile Hindu neighbors; Asha, the ambitious slum leader who used her connections and body in a vain attempt to escape from Annawadi; Manju, her beautiful, intelligent daughter whose hopes lay in the new India of opportunity; Sunil, the master scavenger, a little boy who would not grow; Meena, who drank rat poison rather than become a teenage bride in a remote village; Kalu, the charming garbage thief who was murdered and left by the side of the road. Boo brilliantly brings to life the residents of Annawadi, allowing the reader to know them and admire the fierce intelligence that allows them to survive in a world not made for them.
The best book yet written on India in the throes of a brutal transition.Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6755-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Nov. 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2011
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