General but sometimes inspiring guidance on what humans might achieve, should we learn to get along.
A concise, ambitious plan to save ourselves from ourselves.
Das understates his authority to write on global affairs: “I am not a man of letters, a diplomat...or a philosopher,” he claims. Yet his debut offers a fascinating perspective—that of a cardiologist, a Christian raised in India, and a father. Indeed, his young children’s questions prompted him to synthesize his “nonexpert” ideas on thwarting global destruction. He begins with a simple observation: Despite ethnic and physical differences, humans form a single species. For Das, this fact was reinforced during his harmonious years at a multifaith boarding school in Bangalore and in his medical school anatomy class. He combines religious and scientific views to encourage worldwide cooperation and understanding: “The human genome is written in the language of God...which evolved over hundreds of millions of years,” he writes, citing the geneticist Francis Collins. He contends that only by upholding this basic premise—we are one—can humans cease terrorizing each other and turn their attention toward healing the planet. These reflective, personal opening chapters of Das’ slim volume provide insightful reading and, in fact, contain the makings of a full memoir: a rich life story, engaging writing and a broad worldview. Yet in the book’s main sections, he adopts a more prescriptive tone. He calls for a 1,000-year plan, implemented in century-long chunks and overseen by a federation of democracies. In the more immediate future, he writes, we must achieve zero population growth, extensive synthetic food production, and “perfect waste management,” among other sweeping changes. Like other authors of similar tone and scope, Das provides plenty of detail on what ought to change, but less on how these goals might be reached. He does, however, propose some direction, including redoubled efforts to educate and empower women, and a global goods-and-services tax to fund new development programs. Unfortunately, age-old obstacles—the will of leaders to think beyond elections, businesses beyond profits, consumers beyond want—remain unaddressed and as insurmountable as ever.
General but sometimes inspiring guidance on what humans might achieve, should we learn to get along.Pub Date: May 6, 2014
ISBN: 978-1492775027
Page Count: 82
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 12, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.
Known for her often contentious perspectives, New York Times opinion writer Weiss battles societal Jewish intolerance through lucid prose and a linear playbook of remedies.
While she was vividly aware of anti-Semitism throughout her life, the reality of the problem hit home when an active shooter stormed a Pittsburgh synagogue where her family regularly met for morning services and where she became a bat mitzvah years earlier. The massacre that ensued there further spurred her outrage and passionate activism. She writes that European Jews face a three-pronged threat in contemporary society, where physical, moral, and political fears of mounting violence are putting their general safety in jeopardy. She believes that Americans live in an era when “the lunatic fringe has gone mainstream” and Jews have been forced to become “a people apart.” With palpable frustration, she adroitly assesses the origins of anti-Semitism and how its prevalence is increasing through more discreet portals such as internet self-radicalization. Furthermore, the erosion of civility and tolerance and the demonization of minorities continue via the “casual racism” of political figures like Donald Trump. Following densely political discourses on Zionism and radical Islam, the author offers a list of bullet-point solutions focused on using behavioral and personal action items—individual accountability, active involvement, building community, loving neighbors, etc.—to help stem the tide of anti-Semitism. Weiss sounds a clarion call to Jewish readers who share her growing angst as well as non-Jewish Americans who wish to arm themselves with the knowledge and intellectual tools to combat marginalization and defuse and disavow trends of dehumanizing behavior. “Call it out,” she writes. “Especially when it’s hard.” At the core of the text is the author’s concern for the health and safety of American citizens, and she encourages anyone “who loves freedom and seeks to protect it” to join with her in vigorous activism.
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-593-13605-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2019
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