Case reopened! Gutsy—if at times farfetched—overview of Livingstone's JFK conspiracy theses, first met in High Treason (1989—not reviewed) and High Treason 2 (1992). Livingstone may step off on the wrong foot when drawing himself as emotionally troubled by attacks on him by other researchers, allegedly conspiracy-sponsored, out to get him and to lead others into searches for red herrings—but he unveils plenty of new evidence on the Kennedy killing here. No one should miss his summary of the hard evidence for a conspiracy—which, if accepted, leaves the lone-gunman theory far behind. Livingstone has managed to interview Diana Bowran (uninterviewed in 27 years), a British nurse and the first medical worker at Parkland Hospital to touch JFK's body. Bowran got into the back seat with the President and Jackie; found that JFK had no pulse; stayed with the body the entire time it was in the Trauma Room (aside from three minutes spent getting a transfusion packet); washed the corpse; closed its eyes; packed JFK's nearly empty skull with cotton squares; saw the extra back wound; and wrapped the body and watched its removal in a bronze casket. Livingstone points out that Kennedy's brain could not possibly have weighed 1500 grams (the weight of an average brain), as the autopsy doctors said, because a third or more of it was missing. He asks why the steel-jacketed ``magic bullet'' remains fresh-looking while the head-wound bullet exploded into fine bits, and answers: two guns. Actually, Livingstone posits four. His heavies are Texan oil billionaires H.L. Hunt and Clint Murchison, Jr., with LBJ, J. Edgar Hoover, Richard Nixon, and John J. McCloy all meeting at Murchison's house on the eve of the murder and focusing on raising the national debt and lining their pockets by beefing up the war machine JFK was out to reduce. Livingstone's list of conspirators may sound unlikely, but his examination of the forensic evidence is compelling—and makes this even more readable and exciting than his last. (Sixteen pages of photographs) (First printing of 50,000)
Pub Date: Nov. 22, 1993
ISBN: 0-88184-428-4
Page Count: 640
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1993
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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