by Bill Fletcher Jr. ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 28, 2012
An effective presentation of the importance of trade unions in a democracy.
Talking points to help trade unionists and their supporters rebut conservative attacks.
Fletcher (co-author: Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Path toward Social Justice, 2009, etc.), the director of field services for the American Federation of Government Employees, organizes his argument as a refutation of 21 “myths” that opponents typically use to discredit unions. His historical context begins in the early 19th century, when unionists fought bloody battles to win the right to organize. By the end of World War II, at the height of their power, unions had consolidated gains won during the New Deal. They were considered to be “a part of the so-called mainstream,” although their numbers never exceeded “35 percent of the non-agricultural workforce.” A turnabout began during the Reagan administration, when the president fired striking air traffic controllers. Fletcher makes a strong case that the slogan “right to work” is a misnomer because without a labor organization to defend their interests, individual workers are without job protection. In answer to the first myth—“Workers are forced to join unions, right?” he responds, “The phrasing of a right to work statutes suggest they are about freedom of choice. Actually, they are not. They are about weakening the ability of workers—as a group—from exerting any sort of power.” Throughout, the author elaborates on the theme of the necessity of workers to be free to organize in order to fight for their own rights and also to stand up for social justice. He suggests that deceptive language is deliberately used to disparage unions and that today, unions are becoming increasingly marginalized by unemployment and outsourcing. These circumstances can only be turned around, writes Fletcher, when people assume responsibility for fighting for social justice for all working men and women.
An effective presentation of the importance of trade unions in a democracy.Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-8070-0332-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: June 11, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2012
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by Paul Kalanithi ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 19, 2016
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
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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
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by Abhijit V. Banerjee & Esther Duflo ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 12, 2019
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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