An authoritative, worrying analysis about the prospects for open conflict within the next few years.
A study of the growing urgency of the geopolitical competition between China and the U.S.
Many readers are aware of America’s ongoing competition with China, but Brands and Beckley, specialists in geopolitical history and strategy, express the full gravity of the situation. Their thesis is that China’s growth recently peaked and has begun to decline, but the ambition of its leaders to become the preeminent global power has not lessened. “The greatest geopolitical catastrophes occur at the intersection of ambition and desperation,” they write. “Xi Jinping’s China will soon be driven by plenty of both.” The internal difficulties of the country are escalating, with staggering demographic problems, a stagnating economy, and depletion of resources. By 2030, these issues will dramatically undermine China’s capacity to assert itself on the global stage. As such, write the authors, if China wants to make its big move, it will have to do so very soon. This was the case, they argue, with Germany in the period between the turn of the century and World War II as well as with Japan in the 1930s. In the current situation, the most obvious flashpoint is Taiwan, both to unify China (as Beijing sees it) and as a geopolitical statement of assertion. Therefore, the U.S. must actively manage the short-term crisis and emerge well placed for the long game. Such a strategy might include a treatylike agreement with Taiwan to station U.S. forces there while strengthening other partnerships, including with international organizations. China has a pattern of making threatening statements to anyone who disagrees with its plans, providing an opening for the U.S. to show what a China-dominated world would look like. Brands and Beckley are spot-on in the majority of their analysis, but one wonders if American leaders have the political will and diplomatic competence to implement their recommendations. Nevertheless, the authors have given us much to think about, and much of it is frightening.
An authoritative, worrying analysis about the prospects for open conflict within the next few years.Pub Date: Aug. 16, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-324-02130-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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
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