Of great interest to urban activists and workers at the interface of the public and private sectors, with much food for...
An argument for decentralized government at the urban and municipal levels, where interesting economic and political trends are shaping up in the bargain.
Urban studies scholar Katz (Centennial Scholar/Brookings Institution; co-author: The Metropolitan Revolution, 2013) and community investment leader Nowak (Lindy Institute for Urban Innovation, Drexel Univ.) observe that power of various kinds is “drifting downward from the nation-state to cities and metropolitan communities [and] horizontally from government networks of public, private and civic actors.” This comes as a result, at least in some measure, of cities actively campaigning to recruit industries that require high skill levels and education in order to achieve productivity. Kansas City is a case in point: its civic leaders within and without government are in agreement that they want five things to happen, including building “a workforce for tomorrow” and “making the city the most entrepreneurial in America.” Many things have to happen to bring about such developments, including forging political alliances and investing in urban infrastructure. Beyond that, the authors show that leading urban areas in the “new localism” movement are those that have invested in “innovation districts,” or clusters of business development mixed with academia and, often, government. A good example is Erie, Pennsylvania, where the strong presence of the insurance industry and cybersecurity think tanks has led to a hybridization in risk management, “following the path of customization and alignment.” Financial innovation is necessary to fund such development, but cities are often wealthier than they think; as the authors note, cities are very good at reckoning how much they owe but not how much they own. To this end, they counsel putting “public asset corporations” to work in developing long-term strategies and capturing public wealth that can be reinvested in making cities better places to live—as increasing numbers of people around the nation and world have concluded they are.
Of great interest to urban activists and workers at the interface of the public and private sectors, with much food for thought for investors as well.Pub Date: Jan. 9, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-8157-3164-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2017
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
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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