Penetrating analyses of the nation’s ills.
Scholars, journalists, and political and community leaders diagnose urgent challenges to democracy.
In November 2017, a three-day conference at Oberlin College on “The State of American Democracy” inspired subsequent conversations among participants about how to restore “the promise of democracy” after the stunning election of 2016. Orr (Emeritus, Environmental Studies and Politics/Oberlin Coll.; Dangerous Years: Climate Change and the Long Emergency, 2016, etc.), investigative reporter Gumbel, journalist Kitwana, and Becker, Executive Director of the Presidential Climate Action Project, have gathered cogent, informative essays intended, as Orr writes, “to clarify the historic and institutional origins of the election of 2016 and the growing risk that we are coming unmoored from our history and our highest values.” This risk, the contributors agree, has intensified under the Trump administration, characterized by “mendacity, incompetence, venality, malice” and staffed by “the worst, least qualified, and most unscrupulous” appointees. Jeremi Suri, a professor of global affairs, asserts that Trump, in exploiting citizens’ alienation from government, forces Americans “to rethink the contours of democratic leadership” and portends the viability of “a smaller and humbler presidency, one focused on fewer promises and tethered more closely to ethical limitations.” Environmental activist Judy Braus repeats a call for greater civics and history education in schools to “equip students to become full-fledged citizens, able to make informed, intelligent choices that support the public good.” Jessica Tuchman Mathews, former president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, urges a continuing commitment to treaty-based alliances. Several contributors, including Bill McKibben, focus on climate change as a threat to democracy while sociology professor Michael Eric Dyson joins others in reflecting on democracy and race. Among other topics considered in this wide-ranging collection are the internet, income inequality, the changing voter demographic, the impact of nonaligned voters, and the insidious role of wealthy donors and lobbyists in influencing politicians. The U.S., Becker writes, “is effectively ruled by an unelected plutocratic oligarchy” of “economic elites.” Other contributors include Yascha Mounk, Maria Hinojosa, and Robert Kuttner.
Penetrating analyses of the nation’s ills.Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-62097-513-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: The New Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
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
SEEN & HEARD
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.
Known for her often contentious perspectives, New York Times opinion writer Weiss battles societal Jewish intolerance through lucid prose and a linear playbook of remedies.
While she was vividly aware of anti-Semitism throughout her life, the reality of the problem hit home when an active shooter stormed a Pittsburgh synagogue where her family regularly met for morning services and where she became a bat mitzvah years earlier. The massacre that ensued there further spurred her outrage and passionate activism. She writes that European Jews face a three-pronged threat in contemporary society, where physical, moral, and political fears of mounting violence are putting their general safety in jeopardy. She believes that Americans live in an era when “the lunatic fringe has gone mainstream” and Jews have been forced to become “a people apart.” With palpable frustration, she adroitly assesses the origins of anti-Semitism and how its prevalence is increasing through more discreet portals such as internet self-radicalization. Furthermore, the erosion of civility and tolerance and the demonization of minorities continue via the “casual racism” of political figures like Donald Trump. Following densely political discourses on Zionism and radical Islam, the author offers a list of bullet-point solutions focused on using behavioral and personal action items—individual accountability, active involvement, building community, loving neighbors, etc.—to help stem the tide of anti-Semitism. Weiss sounds a clarion call to Jewish readers who share her growing angst as well as non-Jewish Americans who wish to arm themselves with the knowledge and intellectual tools to combat marginalization and defuse and disavow trends of dehumanizing behavior. “Call it out,” she writes. “Especially when it’s hard.” At the core of the text is the author’s concern for the health and safety of American citizens, and she encourages anyone “who loves freedom and seeks to protect it” to join with her in vigorous activism.
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-593-13605-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2019
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