Useful survey of the roiling state of recent Iranian affairs.
Iranian-born journalist Majd (The Ayatollah Begs to Differ: The Paradox of Modern Iran, 2008) offers a nimble take on Iran’s fraught political landscape.
“Massive fraud,” writes the author, accompanied the official announcement of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s “landslide re-election” against rival Mir Hossein Mousavi in June 2009, giving the lie to the so-called Green Movement of reform. The Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei, validated the results shortly thereafter by declaring a triumph of “religious democracy on display for the whole world to witness.” People were stunned, yet the Islamic Republic has survived for 30 years and is “not a form of government to write off just yet.” How to account for its resiliency and even public support? Majd, an Iranian diplomat’s son who was largely educated in America, has impeccable connections and is able to infiltrate the official and nonofficial camps fluidly. In somewhat erratically organized but readable essays, he is determined to get at the oghdeh, or complexes, that underscore the Iranian psyche. When angry Iranians took to the street to protest the election results, the delighted Western media proclaimed the uprising “a rejection of the Islamic regime altogether,” thus playing into the hands of Ahmadinejad’s supporters, who depicted the movement as a foreign-inspired plot to overthrow the government. First and foremost, the Iranians reject foreign influence and deeply revere democratic ideals. Abrasive and irreverent, with humble provincial roots as the son of a blacksmith, Ahmadinejad has endeared himself to the masses by his muscling of the elite. Majd looks at Iran’s grandiose aspirations abroad, as well its as pernicious support of Hezbollah; the evolving relationship with President Obama; the tenacity of Iranian Jews who insist on staying despite Ahmadinejad’s poisonous anti-Semitic statements; and the power of the mullahs.
Useful survey of the roiling state of recent Iranian affairs.Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-393-07259-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
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
© Copyright 2025 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.
