A guidebook for those uncomfortable with the status quo in race relations and unwilling to exploit white or black hatred. Jacobs, a poet and writer who is African-American, confronts a rarely admitted truth: there is much weirdness regarding race in the US. Often what is unquestioningly assumed would be considered ludicrous by any objective observer, e.g., “the myths of what ‘black’ and ‘white’ are supposed to mean; the casual acceptance of public racial mistrust,” making conventional patterns of racial belief and behavior difficult to take seriously if they were not so serious. Consider the well-dressed, educated black man who notices, day after day, that the seat next to him on the subway remains empty as the car fills up. As a black man, he inspires such distrust that any other seat, or even standing, is preferable for whites to sitting next to him. Or consider the white woman whose idol, Elvis Presley, is scorned by blacks as a white who got rich and famous by appropriating black music. Is Elvis the King or the ultimate symbol of plantation exploitation, of living high off the work of others? The real question, of course, is why people actually care so passionately, about either Elvis or where they sit on the train. Jacobs observes a society in which the flashpoint of racial animosity resides at the level of daily life; no lynchings or O.J. Simpson trials are required for mistrust to bar the possibility of common sense. To navigate this strange world, he offers a primer to “lay bare everyday racial behavior and help make sense of it,” and it works. He takes us through typical situations, pointing out assumptions and then challenging them. Overall, the effect is shocking: self-justifying pablum and inflated rhetoric so dominate discussions of race that arguments which are both strong and reasonable, that are in-your-face without offending, stand out. An impressive contribution that exposes the underlying silliness as well as noxiousness of American racial attitudes.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1999
ISBN: 1-55970-453-5
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Arcade
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1999
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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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“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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