Endlessly interesting—reminiscent at turns of Oswald Spengler, Stanislaw Andreski and Samuel Huntington, though less...
Sweeping, provocative big-picture study of humankind’s political impulses.
Fukuyama (Falling Behind: Explaining the Development Gap Between Latin America and the United States, 2008, etc.) is best known for the post-Hegelian end-of-history thesis he advanced at the conclusion of the Cold War, a thesis often quoted and caricatured but not widely understood. Then as now, he defied easy categorization: Some were inclined to view him as a hard-right conservative, but Edmund Burke probably would have called him a liberal. Just so, his latest study—the first volume, he advertises, of two—describes, in the widest terms, the evolution of the political order that led to the widespread democratization of the globe at the end of the 20th century. With evolution comes the possibility of devolution, though, and Fukuyama opens with the sobering observation that even though that democratization did in fact occur, much trumpeted by neonconservatives certain that the spread of capitalism had everything to do with that victory, we’re witnessing much back-sliding: “a ‘democratic recession’ emerged in the first decade of the twenty-first century.” Given that so much of the international dealings of the United States has concerned the putative spread of democracy and nation-building, and given that the U.S. seems to be one place where this recession is in full swing—as witness the “Left-Right polarization of Congress” and the collapse of “intergenerational social mobility”—Fukuyama offers a broad thesis for what constitutes a healthy modern state. Having looked at such various and sometimes arcane matters as tribal organization on the plains of Central Asia, the Yellow Turban revolt, “the persistent pattern of oligarchic dominance” in medieval Hungary and the rise of English common law, the author isolates three qualities: a strong state, the rule of law and accountability. If all three seem to be waning in this country, then Fukuyama has even more alarming news, the denouement of which will have to await a history that has yet to come to an end, to say nothing of volume two.
Endlessly interesting—reminiscent at turns of Oswald Spengler, Stanislaw Andreski and Samuel Huntington, though less pessimistic and much better written.Pub Date: April 19, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-22734-0
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An intriguing approach to identifying and relating to one’s emotions.
An analysis of our emotions and the skills required to understand them.
We all have emotions, but how many of us have the vocabulary to accurately describe our experiences or to understand how our emotions affect the way we act? In this guide to help readers with their emotions, Brackett, the founding director of Yale University’s Center for Emotional Intelligence, presents a five-step method he calls R.U.L.E.R.: We need to recognize our emotions, understand what has caused them, be able to label them with precise terms and descriptions, know how to safely and effectively express them, and be able to regulate them in productive ways. The author walks readers through each step and provides an intriguing tool to use to help identify a specific emotion. Brackett introduces a four-square grid called a Mood Meter, which allows one to define where an emotion falls based on pleasantness and energy. He also uses four colors for each quadrant: yellow for high pleasantness and high energy, red for low pleasantness and high energy, green for high pleasantness and low energy, and blue for low pleasantness and low energy. The idea is to identify where an emotion lies in this grid in order to put the R.U.L.E.R. method to good use. The author’s research is wide-ranging, and his interweaving of his personal story with the data helps make the book less academic and more accessible to general readers. It’s particularly useful for parents and teachers who want to help children learn to handle difficult emotions so that they can thrive rather than be overwhelmed by them. The author’s system will also find use in the workplace. “Emotions are the most powerful force inside the workplace—as they are in every human endeavor,” writes Brackett. “They influence everything from leadership effectiveness to building and maintaining complex relationships, from innovation to customer relations.”
An intriguing approach to identifying and relating to one’s emotions.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-21284-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
If that promise of clarity is what awaits us all, then death doesn’t seem so awful, and that is a great gift from Sacks. A...
Valediction from the late neurologist and writer Sacks (On the Move: A Life, 2015, etc.).
In this set of four short essays, much-forwarded opinion pieces from the New York Times, the author ponders illness, specifically the metastatic cancer that spread from eye to liver and in doing so foreclosed any possibility of treatment. His brief reflections on that unfortunate development give way to, yes, gratitude as he examines the good things that he has experienced over what, in the end, turned out to be a rather long life after all, lasting 82 years. To be sure, Sacks has regrets about leaving the world, not least of them not being around to see “a thousand…breakthroughs in the physical and biological sciences,” as well as the night sky sprinkled with stars and the yellow legal pads on which he worked sprinkled with words. Sacks works a few familiar tropes and elaborates others. Charmingly, he reflects on his habit since childhood of associating each year of his life with the element of corresponding atomic weight on the periodic table; given polonium’s “intense, murderous radioactivity,” then perhaps 84 isn’t all that it’s cut out to be. There are some glaring repetitions here, unfortunate given the intense brevity of this book, such as his twice citing Nathaniel Hawthorne’s call to revel in “intercourse with the world”—no, not that kind. Yet his thoughts overall—while not as soul-stirringly inspirational as the similar reflections of Randy Pausch or as bent on chasing down the story as Christopher Hitchens’ last book—are shaped into an austere beauty, as when Sacks writes of being able in his final moments to “see my life as from a great altitude, as a sort of landscape, and with a deepening sense of the connection of all its parts.”
If that promise of clarity is what awaits us all, then death doesn’t seem so awful, and that is a great gift from Sacks. A fitting, lovely farewell.Pub Date: Nov. 24, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-451-49293-7
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Oct. 31, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2015
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