by Elwood Corbin ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 11, 2021
A wide-ranging and urgently readable moral manifesto on the importance of veracity.
Awards & Accolades
Our Verdict
GET IT
A sweeping examination of the costs and challenges of telling the truth.
At the beginning of his book, Corbin invokes a very familiar dictum, something every one of his readers will have heard at some point in their lives: “Nobody likes a tattletale.” Corbin points out the obvious: The idea of “don’t talk or else” permeates virtually every level and aspect of society. Whether it’s domestic abuse victims naming their abusers or criminal witnesses identifying suspects or even young people pointing out which of their peers is bullying them, Corbin’s account aims to consider the broadest possible array of what he calls the very courageous act of whistleblowing, and the author cogently examines the deeper levels of collateral damage that accumulate around society’s knee-jerk characterization of whistleblowing as somehow weak or disloyal. “Does the cultural repugnance for people who tell about illegal or unethical activity,” he asks, “lead to an acceptance of a certain amount of wrong doing, from lying and cheating to criminal activity?” The book covers various types of truth telling, the consequences, and the sometimes surprising resistance to being honest—even from those who otherwise consider themselves ethical. “Co-workers view whistleblowing as jeopardizing them and their family’s wellbeing—a regular pay check and health benefits,” Corbin writes, “and they’re not afraid to say so.” The author fleshes out the narrative with many examples drawn from real cases of whistleblowing—everything from corporate espionage to ordinary homeowners dealing with the appearance of suburban crack houses.
Corbin writes all this with a refreshing lack of fuss; his prose is forceful without being strident, and the many examples he gives—of both bravery and cowardice in the face of the need to reveal charged facts—are powerfully and economically drawn. These examples move all along the spectrum of the subject, including, of course, such famous whistleblowers as Daniel Ellsberg and Edward Snowden, whose stories are told with the sharpness of genuine moral outrage. “While Snowden’s detractors were busy crying ‘Treason!’ (which only applies during a war) and demanding that he face the death penalty, they ignore the inconvenient fact that everything NSA was doing was not only in clear violation of federal law, but that a violation of that law carries a prison sentence,” he writes in one such passage. “Has anyone from NSA been charged? Short answer—No.” Some of the author’s judgments on various aspects of whistleblowing can be surprisingly harsh, as in the case of his angry, seemingly hypocritical dismissal of the U.S. Witness Protection Program instituted to protect people who testify against organized crime. “Hiding may be highly desirable for snitches and criminals who live on the margins of life,” he writes, but “it doesn’t work for regular people.” Corbin’s unwavering dedication to the core of his subject—the paramount importance of telling the truth—gives all of his various discussions a compelling moral force. Any reader who’s ever faced this kind of choice—and that’s virtually every reader—will find thought-provoking and sometimes uncomfortable reading in these pages.
A wide-ranging and urgently readable moral manifesto on the importance of veracity.Pub Date: Jan. 11, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5069-0993-6
Page Count: 150
Publisher: First Edition Design Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 24, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Share your opinion of this book
by Judith Butler ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 19, 2024
A master class in how gender has been weaponized in support of conservative values and authoritarian regimes.
A deeply informed critique of the malicious initiatives currently using gender as a political tool to arouse fear and strengthen political and religious institutions.
In their latest book, following The Force of Nonviolence, Butler, the noted philosopher and gender studies scholar, documents and debunks the anti-gender ideology of the right, the core principle of which is that male and female are natural categories whose recognition is essential for the survival of the family, nations, and patriarchal order. Its proponents reject “sex” as a malleable category infused with prior political and cultural understandings. By turning gender into a “phantasmatic scene,” they enable those in positions of authority to deflect attention from such world-destroying forces as war, predatory capitalism, and climate change. Butler explores the ideology’s presence in the U.S., the U.K., Uganda, and Hungary, countries where legislation has limited the rights of trans and homosexual people and denied them their sexual identity. The author also delves into the ideology’s roots among Evangelicals and the Catholic Church and such political leaders as Donald Trump and Viktor Orbán. Butler is particularly bothered by trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs), who treat trans women as “male predators in disguise.” For the author, “the gap between the perceived or lived body and prevailing social norms can never be fully closed.” They imagine “a world where the many relations to being socially embodied that exist become more livable” and calls for alliances across differences and “a radical democracy informed by socialist values.” Butler compensates for the thinness of some of their recommendations with an astute dissection of the ideology’s core ideas and impressive grasp of its intellectual pretensions. This is a wonderfully thoughtful and impassioned book on a critically important centerpiece of contemporary authoritarianism and patriarchy.
A master class in how gender has been weaponized in support of conservative values and authoritarian regimes.Pub Date: March 19, 2024
ISBN: 9780374608224
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
Share your opinion of this book
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
Share your opinion of this book
More About This Book
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.