by Charles Peters ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 7, 2017
A cogent and meaningful call for citizens to share the benefits and burdens of a unified society—hopefully an argument that...
A legendary journalist offers a plea for national civility and unity rooted in the ethos of the New Deal.
Peters (Lyndon B. Johnson, 2010, etc.) wields his longtime experience as founder and former editor-in-chief of the Washington Monthly to offer a thoughtful, well-reasoned argument for American citizens to pull back from political brinksmanship and embrace the values of the Roosevelt era. His first admission and caveat is as honest as it gets: “Now that I am eight-nine, I am painfully aware that there are many younger people who will doubt that I have anything useful to say.” They should listen, as Peters offers a heartfelt remembrance of a time when “the spirit of generosity was accompanied by a sense of neighborliness,” and “those who had little helped those who had even less.” Far from being a nostalgic pipe dream, Peters also examines the baby boomers’ drift toward materialism, the advent of political lobbying and its effect on how government works, and the divisive cultural issues that have triggered a fundamental schism in this nation. The book is also extraordinarily fair in its treatment of this philosophical chasm. While one chapter is devoted to the rise of the right, from Ronald Reagan to Roger Ailes, another examines the left’s cultural elitism and how “The Snob Factor” left much of the country behind. And it’s always worth listening to a guy who managed John F. Kennedy’s 1960 campaign in West Virginia and was introduced to marijuana by Allen Ginsberg; this man has stories. Most importantly, Peters is asking hard questions that neither side seems to want to answer. “People on the other side can have views we regard as deplorable without being deplorable themselves,” he writes. “If we don’t understand their side, how are we going to persuade them to see our side?”
A cogent and meaningful call for citizens to share the benefits and burdens of a unified society—hopefully an argument that isn’t already past its sell-by date.Pub Date: March 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9352-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
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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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