A cautionary tale with a matter-of-fact tone.
The political education of a scientist-turned–nuclear energy regulator.
As chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission under President Barack Obama, Jaczko was not a political insider; nor was he beholden to the industry that had invested and reaped billions of dollars from the proliferation of nuclear energy. He maintains that he was “a nuclear power moderate” when appointed to the commission, though one who “had become skeptical of the ability of the nuclear power industry to properly balance its fiscal responsibility to shareholders with the demands of public safety.” As with many regulatory agencies, nuclear power regulation seems to suffer from a fox-guarding-the-henhouse mentality. The financial stakes are huge, not only for the industry, but for those who benefit from the jobs the industry creates and the taxes it pays, which often support the communities where the reactors are located. Accidents are rare, but when they occur, as the lingering memory of Three Mile Island reminds us, the results can be devastating. Better safe than sorry, but how safe is safe? “What constitutes ‘safety’ is often determined by political, not just scientific, judgments,” writes the author, who experienced political resistance funded by anti-regulation lobbying throughout his tenure. “I was hardly anyone’s first choice for the job,” he admits, as even the Obama administration that appointed him expressed skepticism over his lack of administrative experience and the staffers he would oversee weren’t accustomed to working with someone so young (early 40s). Jaczko found himself consistently at odds not only with the industry he was charged with regulating and with their congressional supporters, but with the rest of his commission. The more he pushed for safeguards following the Japanese Fukushima accident in 2011, the stronger such resistance became, and he admits that “sometimes I behaved in a way that could be described as hotheaded.” Since resigning in 2012, he now advocates from the outside and maintains that “nuclear power is a failed technology.”
A cautionary tale with a matter-of-fact tone.Pub Date: Jan. 15, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4767-5576-2
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2018
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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