Despite its serious deficiencies, an alarming report on the decline of citizenship and cultural unity in America, and its causes and possible consequences for the country. A syndicated columnist and respected foreign policy analyst, Geyer (Waiting for Winter to End, 1994, etc.) brings her well-honed conservative journalistic instincts to bear on domestic America and the current crisis over what she calls the ``death of commitment to the whole . . . the weakening of the citizenship bond.'' This crisis, she argues, is merely an extension of the decline in nationalism around the world. But after plotting the decay of the American ideal of citizenship set forth by Thomas Jefferson and the ``blessed founding fathers,'' Geyer's attention focuses less on the society at large than on the effect on the nation of waves of recent immigrants. Well-documented chapters discuss such matters as our porous borders, through which millions of illegal aliens slip each year, and the ill-conceived campaigns to give non-citizens the right to vote in local elections. Geyer fingers the causes of such woes, including an overwhelmed and underfunded immigration service, politically correct forces which have handcuffed the institutions that foster assimilation, and liberal endowments like the Ford Foundation, which indiscriminately fund pro-immigration activists unrepresentative of minority communities. More liberal readers, however, may find themselves alienated by the conservative line Geyer takes on these controversial issues. There is also a streak of exaggerated pessimism running through the book, which borders on old-fashioned grumpiness: The author repeatedly announces the decline of America and at various times attributes it to '60s rock, youth culture, Elvis sightings, even the Internet (whose users, she generalizes absurdly, are replacing national allegiance with faith in an electronic global village). Such excesses cloud the effectiveness of an otherwise provocative analysis of a critical problem. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Sept. 23, 1996
ISBN: 0-87113-650-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1996
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BOOK REVIEW
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
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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
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“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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