Engaging, multifaceted discussions of a perennial economic issue.
A wide-ranging exploration of the origins of inequality.
Although economic disparity is a major source of debate in contemporary political discourse, philosophical investigations into its principal causes have gone on for centuries. Debut author Longaker examines the issue by starting with a focused question: why did some nations spectacularly capitalize on the economic opportunities generated by the Industrial Revolution, while others missed the boat? The author’s response heavily applies principles of Darwinian evolution. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, he says, the world’s rate of population growth was largely stagnant; later, economically affluent people reproduced at a more impressive rate than their poorer counterparts, more of their offspring survived, and the traits that supported their superior success proved heritable, Longaker asserts. But after a process that took approximately 1,000 years, the difference between the global rich and poor has solidified, he says, and the power of Darwinian evolution has waned: “Darwinian fitness, at least as we have used it, no longer operates nearly as intensely as before.” The author’s study is stunningly broad, traversing an extraordinary swath of intellectual territory, including ideas from economics, evolutionary biology, anthropology, and psychology, just to name a few. He shows a refreshing penchant for challenging regnant academic pieties; he presents powerful reasons to be suspicious of the doctrine of “psychic unity,” for example. Although the book doesn’t appear to have any discriminatory or prejudicial motivations, the author offers a thoughtful, lively response to potential accusations of racism, which he calls “wrongheaded.” Additionally, Longaker provides a searching analysis of the stubborn problem of poverty, astutely distinguishing between urban and rural manifestations. The book’s survey of the relevant literature is also instructive; the author helpfully contrasts his own work with Guns, Germs, and Steel author Jared Diamond’s geographical determinism, for instance. But although the prose is consistently accessible, this is still a long and sometimes-long-winded analysis that’s heavy on statistical minutiae, and some of the more data-laden sections may prove exhausting. However, the author’s meticulousness and spirited iconoclasm repays careful attention.
Engaging, multifaceted discussions of a perennial economic issue.Pub Date: March 31, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9979617-0-6
Page Count: 404
Publisher: Napoleon Avenue
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.
A light-speed tour of (mostly) Western poetry, from the 4,000-year-old Gilgamesh to the work of Australian poet Les Murray, who died in 2019.
In the latest entry in the publisher’s Little Histories series, Carey, an emeritus professor at Oxford whose books include What Good Are the Arts? and The Unexpected Professor: An Oxford Life in Books, offers a quick definition of poetry—“relates to language as music relates to noise. It is language made special”—before diving in to poetry’s vast history. In most chapters, the author deals with only a few writers, but as the narrative progresses, he finds himself forced to deal with far more than a handful. In his chapter on 20th-century political poets, for example, he talks about 14 writers in seven pages. Carey displays a determination to inform us about who the best poets were—and what their best poems were. The word “greatest” appears continually; Chaucer was “the greatest medieval English poet,” and Langston Hughes was “the greatest male poet” of the Harlem Renaissance. For readers who need a refresher—or suggestions for the nightstand—Carey provides the best-known names and the most celebrated poems, including Paradise Lost (about which the author has written extensively), “Kubla Khan,” “Ozymandias,” “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads, which “changed the course of English poetry.” Carey explains some poetic technique (Hopkins’ “sprung rhythm”) and pauses occasionally to provide autobiographical tidbits—e.g., John Masefield, who wrote the famous “Sea Fever,” “hated the sea.” We learn, as well, about the sexuality of some poets (Auden was bisexual), and, especially later on, Carey discusses the demons that drove some of them, Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath among them. Refreshingly, he includes many women in the volume—all the way back to Sappho—and has especially kind words for Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop, who share a chapter.
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-23222-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
