A necessary addition to the bookshelves of history buffs and political science enthusiasts.
An eye-opening exploration of America’s two-party system.
In this debut book, attorney DiStefano, a former adviser to Rudy Giuliani’s 2008 presidential campaign, concludes that a drastic change to American politics is coming soon. He focuses on the concept of party realignment, in which political parties are formed, reformed, and even extinguished over the course of history. Realignments occur, DiStefano explains, when political realities shift and new issues and attitudes force change. The bulk of this work recounts the five different party systems that the United States has known since its inception. It begins with the birth of the two-party system under Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson and continues through the realignments of the Jacksonian era, the run-up to the Civil War, the populism of Democratic politician William Jennings Bryan, and the disruption of the Great Depression. Although the U.S. Constitution doesn’t mention political parties, the author argues that its system of governance promotes the continuing existence of two such parties—with each within striking distance of a majority. But America’s current system, DiStefano notes, has basically debated the New Deal for eight decades while America has moved on to other issues: “All our parties know how to do—all they were designed to do—is to fight about the world of Franklin Roosevelt.” Readers who are well versed in political science will already be familiar with the concept of party realignment at the center of this book. Still, many will find that DiStefano’s conclusions are full of common sense, even if the blur of today’s contentious political discussion seems to hide such seemingly simple realities. Overall, the author does an admirable job of putting history into perspective and providing a balanced view of how the winds of today’s political climate may be blowing. Whether the next realignment is quick and easy or long and drawn-out depends on whether voters and politicians recognize the need for party reform, DiStefano asserts.
A necessary addition to the bookshelves of history buffs and political science enthusiasts.Pub Date: May 7, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-63388-508-0
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Prometheus Books
Review Posted Online: July 11, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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
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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