Bedside reading for Karl Rove wannabes preparing for 2008.
Why have recent US national elections been so close? It’s the regions, stupid.
In an analysis of election data and exit polls of the past five decades, political scientists Earl (Political Science/Rice Univ.) and Merle (Politics and Government/Emory Univ.), twin brothers and coauthors (The Rise of Southern Republicans, 2003, etc.), show that the Democrats and Republicans are now evenly balanced in the national electorate, each having two regional strongholds and battling for voters in the ten-state Midwest swing region. The authors note that this development may be traced back to the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, which ended a Democratic advantage among white voters dating to the New Deal. Reagan realigned white voters, with conservative whites going to the Republicans (now redefined as a conservative party emphasizing national security, economic growth, lower taxes and traditional positions on cultural and religious matters) and liberal whites increasingly joining the Democrats. It was the beginning of the end of the party factions once known as liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats. Trends continued gradually, and by 2004, the parties were more polarized than ever, with Republicans now drawing their strength from the South and Mountains/Plains states, the Democrats from the Northeast and Pacific Coast. These sharp regional differences now drive American politics, say the authors, and have ushered in an era of highly competitive, ideologically contentious and close elections. Goodbye, landslides. The Republican Party is now dominated by white Protestants (with evangelicals comprising 59 percent of them in 2004), the Democrats by minorities and non-Christian whites, and neither party can win a national election with only the support of their regional strongholds. Hence, the Midwest battleground will continue to determine the outcome of our elections. Using charts, the authors explore facets of their regional analysis and show how easy it is for national elections to go either way.
Bedside reading for Karl Rove wannabes preparing for 2008.Pub Date: March 20, 2007
ISBN: 0-7432-6206-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2006
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
PERSPECTIVES
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
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