Illuminating, but doesn’t quite come together as more than the sum of its parts.
Following his release from a maximum-security prison, a black convicted murderer, Kevin Davis, adjusts to life in the mostly white New York suburbs.
In 1993, as former schoolteacher Donaldson was finishing his debut (The Ville), a critically praised, unsentimental look at Brownsville, Brooklyn—then the most dangerous neighborhood in America—he crossed paths with Davis, whose image was unwittingly featured on the book’s jacket. When detectives saw the cover, they recognized Davis as a suspect in a fatal shooting and subsequently tracked and arrested him. After carrying The Ville around for his six-year sentence, Davis, upon his release, called Donaldson and the two met in midtown Manhattan, so that Davis could share his history, hoping to collaborate on a book about himself. Of the 630,000 prisoners released each year in this country, half are black, and Donaldson felt Davis “might provide an unusual opportunity to write a story about that reentry into society.” Seeking a fresh start in Elmira, N.Y., Davis tried unsuccessfully for years to find employment, enduring regular brushes with the local police. He eventually settled down with a college-educated, white, single mother in her mid-20s, Karen. As a couple, Kevin and Karen shared an affectionate, sometimes violent relationship resulting in the birth of a daughter. After Karen agreed to Kevin’s suggestion that she hold drugs for someone in exchange for cash, she was arrested and sent to jail for two years. Under mounting stress, including Kevin’s continued unemployment and fathering a child with another woman, their union blew up, and Kevin was found guilty of assaulting her. In the spirit of Adrian Nicole LeBlanc’s Random Family (2003) a superb chronicle of life in the Bronx, Zebratown offers a deeply personal, unflinching portrayal of the struggle to reform and make good as a father, partner, worker and member of society. The book stands as a testament to this never-ending struggle, and it’s a grim, poignant, occasionally disconnected study of character and the hope of redemption.
Illuminating, but doesn’t quite come together as more than the sum of its parts.Pub Date: Aug. 24, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4391-5378-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
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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