by David Goldman with Ken Abraham ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 10, 2011
With the assistance of veteran co-author Abraham (Billy: The Untold Story of a Young Billy Graham and the Test of Faith that Almost Changed Everything, 2008, etc.), Goldman tells the story of his six-year battle to regain custody of his son Sean.
While working in Milan in 1997, the author met his future wife Bruna. Although she was Brazilian, they decided to marry and make their home in the New Jersey beach community where he was raised. Sean was born in 2000. In 2004, Bruna and Sean traveled to Brazil to visit her parents. Goldman planned to join them in a week, but four days after her departure, she phoned to inform him that she was leaving him and demanded sole custody of their son. The author writes that Bruna threatened him and pressured him to sign legal documents granting her custody. Seeking legal advice, he learned that this was not just a custody case. According to the Hague Convention, which had been ratified by both the United States and Brazilian, his wife had kidnapped their son. Despite the fact that U.S. courts ordered the immediate return of the Sean to the United States—where a custody hearing would be held in accordance with the Convention—Goldman was thwarted continually by the Brazilian judicial system. In 2008, having no other recourse, Goldman decided to seek publicity for his case. Featured on NBC, he attracted the attention of New Jersey Representative Chris Smith, who became a determined advocate on his behalf and enlisted support from fellow congressmen, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Obama. Sean became a poster child for thousands of other abducted children, and finally, in December 2009, he was released to the custody of his father. A riveting tale of an unusual abduction and a father’s determination to regain rightful custody of his son.
Pub Date: May 10, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-670-02262-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2011
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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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