Given the powerful evidence they present, it seems a small price to pay for centuries of wrong—though “an admission that the...
Can whites and blacks ever coexist peaceably in America? The answer, to judge by this depressing essay, seems to be no.
Martin Luther King Jr. suspected that the issue of equality was insoluble largely because whites were “deeply racist” and were unwilling to address their racism. Historians Adams and Sanders (The Private Death of Public Discourse, 1998) give no reason to think King wrong, arguing that “our history is largely the product of an elemental desire of America’s white citizenry to keep blacks at arm’s length and deny them entry to white society.” Though that “largely” is debatable, the authors catalogue the many manifestations of that desire: the long history of slavery; the relentless drive of early-19th-century leaders such as Thomas Jefferson to expand American territory precisely in order to spread slavery; the long indifference of the North to the slave trade; the determined efforts of state voting commissions to evade 15th Amendment guarantees; the nationwide imposition of Jim Crow laws; and the continuing de facto separation of the great mass of African-Americans into a permanent underclass. Though significant gains were made during the decades of civil- and voting-rights activism, the authors acknowledge, many advances were just as significantly undone with the rise of the “New Federalism” of Ronald Reagan and company, who saw to it that “the search for racial equality had nearly disappeared from the nation’s domestic policy agenda” by the early ’90s. Bill Clinton was heralded by black voters, but his eight years in office revealed a constant “inability to get things done” on their behalf, and the present administration seems unwilling to recognize that a problem exists, despite the disparities between African-Americans and nearly every other ethnic group in nearly every facet of social and economic life. In light of this legacy of ill treatment, the authors close by making a reasoned if somewhat cursory case for reparations.
Given the powerful evidence they present, it seems a small price to pay for centuries of wrong—though “an admission that the majority of white citizens seem unwilling to make.”Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2003
ISBN: 0-06-019975-X
Page Count: 384
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2003
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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