While capitalism may have bested communism in the Cold War, Fallows (More Like Us, 1989; National Defense, 1981, which won the American Book Award) fears that the West does not realize that the world's balance of economic power is shifting from the North Atlantic to the Pacific Basin and, further, that Asian economic success is based on a system of free enterprise that diverges in crucial ways from that of the West. Fallows (who has lived and traveled in Asia as a reporter for the Atlantic Monthly) presents both an anecdotal and an analytic appraisal of the challenges that East Asia (notably Japan, but also coastal China, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand) poses to the US and its allies. To illustrate, he shows that Japan (an economic colossus whose lead many neighboring nations follow) gauges success not by what the country can purchase but by what it can make. By contrast, prevalent Anglo-Saxon economic theory measures a society's wealth in terms of consumption levels and reckons cutthroat competition (which eliminates inefficient suppliers) a necessary evil. In addition to discussing the consensus assumptions underlying Tokyo's trade and industrial policies, Fallows examines Japan's cultural and historical legacies: a late start in industrial development, the homogeneity of its population, residual xenophobia, clear political objectives, and perdurable grievances dating back to the postwar Allied occupation. By failing to grasp how and why East Asia's guided, nationalistic version of capitalism varies from the Western paradigm (which places particular value on individual rights), Fallows asserts, the West risks pursuing pointless goals in relations with the area's bellwether countries. Rather than engaging in acrimonious debate about what's fair or not, he argues, the US should learn from the economic achievements of the Pacific Basin nations, applying such principles as can be gainfully adapted from their systems to its own education, industrial, investment, and trade policies. An astute observer's provocative response to what he deems the large-scale economic challenges posed by Asia to the West. (Author tour)
Pub Date: April 18, 1994
ISBN: 0-679-42251-X
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1994
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Less a sequel than an addendum, the book offers a close-up view of the Oval Office in its darkest hour.
Four decades after Watergate shook America, journalist Woodward (The Price of Politics, 2012, etc.) returns to the scandal to profile Alexander Butterfield, the Richard Nixon aide who revealed the existence of the Oval Office tapes and effectively toppled the presidency.
Of all the candidates to work in the White House, Butterfield was a bizarre choice. He was an Air Force colonel and wanted to serve in Vietnam. By happenstance, his colleague H.R. Haldeman helped Butterfield land a job in the Nixon administration. For three years, Butterfield worked closely with the president, taking on high-level tasks and even supervising the installation of Nixon’s infamous recording system. The writing here is pure Woodward: a visual, dialogue-heavy, blow-by-blow account of Butterfield’s tenure. The author uses his long interviews with Butterfield to re-create detailed scenes, which reveal the petty power plays of America’s most powerful men. Yet the book is a surprisingly funny read. Butterfield is passive, sensitive, and dutiful, the very opposite of Nixon, who lets loose a constant stream of curses, insults, and nonsensical bluster. Years later, Butterfield seems conflicted about his role in such an eccentric presidency. “I’m not trying to be a Boy Scout and tell you I did it because it was the right thing to do,” Butterfield concedes. It is curious to see Woodward revisit an affair that now feels distantly historical, but the author does his best to make the story feel urgent and suspenseful. When Butterfield admitted to the Senate Select Committee that he knew about the listening devices, he felt its significance. “It seemed to Butterfield there was absolute silence and no one moved,” writes Woodward. “They were still and quiet as if they were witnessing a hinge of history slowly swinging open….It was as if a bare 10,000 volt cable was running through the room, and suddenly everyone touched it at once.”
Less a sequel than an addendum, the book offers a close-up view of the Oval Office in its darkest hour.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1644-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 20, 2015
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