An important contribution to understanding the contentious politics of today.
Martin (Sociology/Univ. of California, San Diego; The Permanent Tax Revolt: How the Property Tax Transformed American Politics, 2008, etc.) asks why the already powerful and influential wealthy in America would resort to outsider tactics of protests and petitions to further their economic interests and why those of lesser means would protest on their behalf.
The tea party movement, writes the author, is but “the newest expression of an old tradition,” a “peculiar mix of populist tactics and militant anti-egalitarian demands.” Since the 1913 ratification of the 16th Amendment—which allows for a federal tax on income—the rich and their allies have consistently fought to limit tax rates on the rich and even for the repeal of the amendment. This libertarian right turned to populist tactics when other strategies to meet such common policy challenges failed. But they had to be taught such tactics. In large part, Martin’s book is the story of these “experienced movement entrepreneurs” who developed and carried out grass-roots campaigns on behalf of the rich. Most such entrepreneurs had participated in or experienced the radical left movements of their times: James Asbury Arnold, the original organizer for the right, was a veteran of the agrarian protest of the early 20th century; Edward Aloysius Rumely, a later organizer, came from a similar radical background. Grover Norquist, today’s powerful anti-tax organizer, learned many of his tactics from the Angolan Marxist revolutionary Jonas Savimbi. The rich pursued such tactics because they worked, especially when sympathetic presidents were in power, be it Calvin Coolidge or George W. Bush. With the capture of the Republican Party by anti-tax zealots, writes Martin, more rich people’s movements, and widening inequality, can be expected. While at times lapsing into social science–speak (e.g., “logistic regression analysis”), Martin by and large tells his tale in an approachable manner.
An important contribution to understanding the contentious politics of today.Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-19-992899-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2013
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
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
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