As various challenges confront nations around the world, Stonebarger offers his personal take on our society’s past, present and future, focusing on the intersection of the economic, political and cultural.
Stonebarger’s major assertion is that the most successful, everlasting system in our global history is what he terms “free-market liberal democracy,” which, going forward, will bring worldwide prosperity if and when more nations adopt the system for themselves. He breaks down free-market liberal democracy into three tenets—capitalism, (humanistic) religion and science and technology. As he explores these three pillars, the author compares each to what he believes are their biggest threats—communistic ideology and politics, radical Islam and radical environmentalism (problematic, he asserts, because it includes some extreme adherents who insist society revert to a simpler life in order to avoid global ecological catastrophe as well as counsel against certain pathways of innovation). A common thread throughout the book is the distinction between “win-win” and “zero-sum” transactions, wherein the former benefits both parties, while the latter only benefits one. Stonebarger concludes, perhaps a bit too idealistically, that free-market liberal democracy is a win-win structure that ensures a free, capitalistic, compassionate and healthy society. The author’s conversational tone and style lends itself well to his topic. The book could be improved by an analytically tighter, more reasoned thesis, as competing—stretching, at times head-achingly, into contradictory—conclusions often appear. A stronger execution would cut down on repetition and allow for an overall more engaging narrative arc. It is quite surprising, given the subject, that there is little discussion of the current state of financial affairs in the United States and abroad; Stonebarger’s perspective, as someone who has lived through several major historical events since the Great Depression, allows him the opportunity to make firsthand observations and possibly clarify his premise and positions through real-world contexts. A treatise uniquely suited for an ideologically and politically likeminded audience, though oddly out of touch with recent game-changing global events.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1559791953
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Gilman Street
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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