This book, pretty much ripped from the headlines, contains nothing surprising for followers of current affairs, but it’s...
In their second book, Daalder and Lindsay (co-authors: America Unbound: The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy, 2003) skewer almost every decision made by Donald Trump regarding the role of the United States on the world stage.
The co-authors, both experts in the field of foreign policy, explain that after World War II, U.S. presidents and their staffs made conscious decisions to assume the leadership role among all nations, not only for the benefit of the U.S., but also to advance social and economic progress in other countries. Some readers might react skeptically to such a rosy interpretation of foreign policy motives since 1945, but that hypothesis undergirds the narrative. Trump’s detractors will delight in the authors’ unrelenting criticism of the president, who is portrayed as selfish in his emphasis on “America First” and as ignorant for ignoring those he tapped to supposedly advise him. Daalder and Lindsay hark back to a 1987 letter Trump paid to publish in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Boston Globe titled “There’s Nothing Wrong with America’s Foreign Defense Policy That a Little Backbone Can’t Cure.” Even then, it demonstrated his disdain for economic and military cooperation with other nations. The authors consistently demonstrate their grasp of what many other commentators failed to understand during the 2016 campaign: that Trump would never alter his rigid views if and when he occupied the White House. Within their negative critique of Trump, the authors offer alarming—and occasionally alarmist—scenarios about how the president might be ceding world leadership to the Chinese government. “A Chinese-dominated world would not be friendly to the United States,” they write. “Beijing has little incentive to resolve security crises to Washington’s satisfaction.”
This book, pretty much ripped from the headlines, contains nothing surprising for followers of current affairs, but it’s accessibly written and has worth as a primer for the previously inattentive.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5417-7385-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
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
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.
Known for her often contentious perspectives, New York Times opinion writer Weiss battles societal Jewish intolerance through lucid prose and a linear playbook of remedies.
While she was vividly aware of anti-Semitism throughout her life, the reality of the problem hit home when an active shooter stormed a Pittsburgh synagogue where her family regularly met for morning services and where she became a bat mitzvah years earlier. The massacre that ensued there further spurred her outrage and passionate activism. She writes that European Jews face a three-pronged threat in contemporary society, where physical, moral, and political fears of mounting violence are putting their general safety in jeopardy. She believes that Americans live in an era when “the lunatic fringe has gone mainstream” and Jews have been forced to become “a people apart.” With palpable frustration, she adroitly assesses the origins of anti-Semitism and how its prevalence is increasing through more discreet portals such as internet self-radicalization. Furthermore, the erosion of civility and tolerance and the demonization of minorities continue via the “casual racism” of political figures like Donald Trump. Following densely political discourses on Zionism and radical Islam, the author offers a list of bullet-point solutions focused on using behavioral and personal action items—individual accountability, active involvement, building community, loving neighbors, etc.—to help stem the tide of anti-Semitism. Weiss sounds a clarion call to Jewish readers who share her growing angst as well as non-Jewish Americans who wish to arm themselves with the knowledge and intellectual tools to combat marginalization and defuse and disavow trends of dehumanizing behavior. “Call it out,” she writes. “Especially when it’s hard.” At the core of the text is the author’s concern for the health and safety of American citizens, and she encourages anyone “who loves freedom and seeks to protect it” to join with her in vigorous activism.
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-593-13605-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2019
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