A timely, important topic, but this weakly supported polemic fails to adequately explain the many pressing problems in...
Debut author Sein, a Muslim, accuses his fellow Muslims worldwide of corruption, intolerance and cruelty.
“Deeply shaken” by 9/11, Sein, a well-traveled engineer from Pakistan, takes a “critical look” at the Muslim psyche, and from his perspective, the view isn’t pretty. Among the problems in the Muslim world: brutality, corruption, human rights abuses, intolerance and a sense of victimhood. The book traces these supposed universal attributes of Muslims to two main sources: a high self-regard as “God’s pampered followers” and envy of Westerners, “better and smarter than us.” Giving ample evidence of corruption in Muslim countries, ranging from small bribes for cops and petty bureaucrats to rigged elections at government’s highest levels, Sein wonders why suicide bombers don’t target corrupt Muslim officials. Written as short essays in a kind of journal format dating back to 2005, most of Sein’s points develop either anecdotally, based on conversations with friends and acquaintances, or as commentary upon what’s by now become old news. In addition, the anecdotal evidence isn’t well-supported. For instance, the author attributes to “many an elderly person” his claim that Muslim freedom has declined since the end of British rule in Pakistan; off-the-cuff asides—“I don’t know how true this is”; “if I remember correctly”; and “I cannot say with certainty”—won’t inspire confidence. Though Sein shows courage in even attempting this healthy act of self-criticism, especially of a religion whose fundamentalist followers are notoriously intolerant, he paints with too broad a brush. And even if he limited his criticism to fundamentalist factions, it could easily apply to many other religious and nationalist zealots. In fact, he shows a stunning naïveté regarding the reasons for the United States’ foreign adventures, though he does at least concede its failures in Iraq, Afghanistan and other Muslim nations—though he blames the victims by pinning the continuing turmoil on the invaded rather than the invaders. Like many such works, the book’s long on critique but short on solutions, offering only vague, mysterious nostrums, such as encouraging freedom and opportunity in Muslim countries “through silent and invisible means.”
A timely, important topic, but this weakly supported polemic fails to adequately explain the many pressing problems in Muslim countries or to offer any likely solutions.Pub Date: March 3, 2011
ISBN: 978-1456700911
Page Count: 252
Publisher: AuthorHouseUK
Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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