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THE SCARIEST PLACE ON EARTH

EYE TO EYE WITH HURRICANES

A terrific popular history of hurricanes by cosmochemist and novelist Fisher (Marine Geology and Geophysics/Univ. of Miami; The Wrong Man, 1993). Fisher's chatty digressions and personal recollections of Hurricane Andrew, which swept through south Florida in August 1992, lend the book an informality that makes the hard science breezily accessible. While Fisher may overstate the case by calling Andrew ``the greatest disaster ever to hit the United States,'' there's no denying the massive destruction left by the category 5 hurricane as it swept from Ft. Lauderdale to the Florida Keys on into Louisiana. An effective warning system, he notes, and scientific know-how in predicting Andrew's course saved countless lives. He recounts other more deadly hurricanes, such as the one that hit Galveston, Tex., in 1900 and killed 9,000. The Great Hurricane of 1780 tore through Barbados, St. Lucia, Puerto Rico, and Bermuda, killing as many as 19,000 people. More recent events recalled here include Adm. Bull Halsey's disastrous 1944 confrontation with a typhoon (as hurricanes are called in the Pacific) just east of the Philippines: Scientific data being what it then was, Halsey tried to outrun the storm and mistakenly turned right into it, losing 800 men, several destroyers, and 186 planes. Fisher's scientific explanations—e.g., why hurricanes turn counterclockwise; the molecular reaction of heat on air; the laws of angular momentum—are clear if not concise. Especially interesting is his history of the study of hurricanes, going back as far as the 13th century. Fisher profiles scientists, researchers, and others such as Col. Joseph P. Duckworth, who, in July 1943, was the first to fly an airplane into the eye of a hurricane. Zesty popular science, with a nice blend of historical lore and personal observation.

Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1994

ISBN: 0-679-42775-9

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1994

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WHEN BREATH BECOMES AIR

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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GOOD ECONOMICS FOR HARD TIMES

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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