A well-researched, nuanced analysis of Pakistan’s recent history and promising future.
A debut author surveys the struggles and promises of his native Pakistan.
“Pakistan was born from a dream,” writes Kamal in the opening chapter, highlighting the nation’s notional identity as a place “where Muslims could thrive in prosperity and equality,” serving as “a model of justice and progress for the world.” The book blends sociopolitical commentary on the current state of Pakistan with the author’s own history, offering a grassroots perspective on Pakistan’s difficulties and aspirations. Born in Karachi to a middle-class family, the author obtained an undergraduate degree in Pakistan before moving to the United States to pursue an advanced degree. He would ultimately raise a family and build a successful business in the U.S. While appreciating his “adopted home,” Kamal still holds on to the dream of Pakistan’s founders and his belief in the nation’s “vibrant culture, remarkable resilience, and inspiring heroes.” He does not shy away from the challenges Pakistan faces, from bureaucratic inefficiency and corruption to economic and educational inequality, while maintaining hope for its future. He notes, for instance, that more than 60% of the nation’s population is composed of youth who represent “an untapped wellspring of energy and innovation.” Paying close attention to marginalized groups, the author’s nuanced analysis underscores discrimination against gay and transgender persons while also celebrating positive developments, such as Pakistan’s 2018 Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, which guarantees trans citizens the right to change their gender on official records and equal access to education and public spaces. Combining his own observations with impressive research (backed by more than 350 footnotes), Kamal delivers an in-depth portrayal of the Asian nation. His critical takes do not spare inept officials, but they are tempered by the author’s fundamental belief in the goodness of average Pakistani citizens. Written in an accessible prose style, the book provides ample historical and cultural context for readers unacquainted with the intricacies of Pakistani history and culture, making it an effective primer.
A well-researched, nuanced analysis of Pakistan’s recent history and promising future.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: March 11, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
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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