Two intriguing 1930s novellas, fine examples of a then-popular genre: literary Pan-Africanism. When Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1935, racial patriotism ran high in the US, and American blacks rallied behind the ancient African kingdom. These two stories combine propaganda and entertainment; while they read like straightforward murder mysteries, they demonstrate the commitment of essayist, journalist, and satirist Schuyler (18851977) to the outcome of Ethiopia's struggle. An influential writer during the Harlem Renaissance, Schuyler rejected the idea of a black aesthetic and criticized the movement as ``The Negro-Art Hokum,'' yet many of his articles and editorials for the influential Pittsburgh Courier are now considered classics of African-American journalism. As editor Hill (History/UCLA) points out in his evocative foreword, Schuyler had the creativity to convey his ideas to a general audience, both in journalism and—in the case of these novellas and two other stories recently reissued under the title Black Empire (1991)—in pulp fiction. The first work here, ``The Ethiopian Murder Mystery,'' opens with the discovery of a dead Ethiopian prince in a Sugar Hill apartment. The police charge a prominent Harlem socialite, who admits to being with him minutes before the coroner's estimated time of death, but insists he was still breathing when she left. A young newspaper reporter convinced of her innocence does some inspired sleuthing and unravels a conspiracy involving a death ray with which the Ethiopians could annihilate the invading Italians. In the second tale, ``Revolt in Ethiopia,'' a rich American interested only in the good life abroad falls in love with an Ethiopian princess seeking to procure money to support her country's freedom fighters. When the Italians kill her bodyguard, the American comes to her rescue and joins her on a perilous journey to retrieve precious jewels from an ancient mountain sect in the hills of Ethiopia. Proof that art and politics do mix.
Pub Date: Dec. 5, 1994
ISBN: 1-55553-204-7
Page Count: 229
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
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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