A cogent, timely warning about the fragility of American democracy.
A biting critique of the current Supreme Court.
Lawyer Millhiser, a senior correspondent at Vox and senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, argues persuasively that the Supreme Court, with its 6-3 Republican majority, “is potentially an existential threat to the Democratic Party’s national ambitions—and, more importantly, to liberal democracy in the United States.” With Congress increasingly partisan and dysfunctional, the author asserts that the court has exerted decisive policy changes: dismantling campaign finance law and weakening the Voting Rights Act, the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion, laws shielding workers from sexual and racial harassment, public sector unions’ ability to raise funds, and Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan. Along with examining the judicial backgrounds of the Republican-appointed judges, Millhiser looks closely at salient cases in four areas that reveal the court’s conservative bias: voting rights, limitations on federal power, expression of religion, and the right to sue. As for voting, the author clearly shows how the court’s decisions work against the election of Democrats by allowing redistricting laws that favor Republicans, thereby transforming legislative elections “into little more than a formality in many states.” Limiting federal regulatory power also favors a conservative agenda, for example, impeding the government in addressing climate change. “This fight over the federal government’s power to address a slow-moving catastrophe,” Millhiser writes, “is just one battle in a many-front war over federal agencies’ power to regulate.” In addition, court decisions regarding religion have opened the possibility that business owners may claim religious objections to following anti-discrimination laws or even paying taxes. Because judges have “no democratic legitimacy,” the responsibility to shape policy must lie with Congress. Deferring to the court “means placing unchecked power in the hands of men and women who serve for life, and who may be no less partisan than the people who can be voted out of office if they use their power irresponsibly.”
A cogent, timely warning about the fragility of American democracy.Pub Date: March 30, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-73442-076-0
Page Count: 142
Publisher: Columbia Global Reports
Review Posted Online: March 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
An overdue upending of art historical discourse.
An indispensable primer on the history of art, with an exclusive focus on women.
Prominent 19th-century art critic John Ruskin once proclaimed, “the woman’s intellect is not for invention or creation, but for sweet ordering, arrangement, and decision,” and traces of this misguided and malignant sentiment can still be found over a century later in art institutions around the world. A 2019 study found that “in the collections of eighteen major US art museums, 87 percent of artworks were by men, and 85 percent by white artists.” There’s a lot to be mad about, but London-based art historian Hessel nimbly pivots that energy into a constructive, revelatory project. This book is not a mere rebuttal to the aforementioned discrimination; deftly researched, the text reveals an alternate history of centuries of artistic movements. With palpable excitement, the author shifts the focus from widely known male participants to the unsung female players of the time. Art aficionados will delight in Hessel’s sleight of hand and marvel at her wide, inclusive reach. Spanning from Baroque art to the present day, she effortlessly removes “the clamour of men” and, in a series of short biographical profiles, shapes a historical arc that still feels grounded even without a familiar male presence. Art history must “reset,” Hessel writes, and she positions her book as an important first step in that reconfiguration. While the author progresses mostly movement by movement, her broader tangents are particularly profound. One of many highlights is a generous overview of queer artists of the Weimar era. Hessel is occasionally uneven with how much content she allots each artist, and some perfunctory profiles feel like the result of trying to highlight as many names as possible. Nonetheless, even the shortest gloss provides enough intrigue to be a successful introduction to an artist who might otherwise be forgotten.
An overdue upending of art historical discourse.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9780393881868
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2023
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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