A cogent argument for gender parity and a revealing look at cultural change.
How women effect change once they reach a critical mass.
As a political correspondent for TIME, journalist Newton-Small investigated the response of women senators to the government shutdown in 2013. Her article about their bipartisan efforts to foster negotiations led her to a broader investigation into women’s influence in government, the judiciary, business, police forces, and the military. Interviews with more than 200 women inform her thoughtful, often inspiring debut book. The author argues that once women’s participation reaches at least 20 percent of a group, they can “change the culture and influence outcomes.” She found this “critical mass” in Congress, now 20 percent female; the current presidential administration (30 percent), and federal judgeships (35 percent)—but not in the private sector. On corporate boards, “women who served alone were often ignored…and their views discounted” until they numbered three or more. Many of her subjects are prominent, outspoken, and recognizable: Nancy Pelosi, for example, who “played politics on a man’s field and played it better than any of them,” and New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand. But Newton-Small also explores the contributions of Tulsi Gabbard, who served in Iraq, was elected to Congress from Hawaii, and educated her male peers about women’s military experiences; Erie Meyer, who left the “frat-boy culture” of a tech firm to work in the Ohio Attorney General’s office; and Elizabeth Bondurant, a New Jersey police chief who believes that women are more likely than men to defuse a hostile situation through talking. From these conversations, the author concludes that women bring particular skills and perspectives to any culture, including facility with communication and propensity to listen, compromise, and form alliances. She also finds “a good deal of evidence that women are inherently risk-averse,” making it less likely that the scandal incited by Lehman Brothers would have occurred at Lehman Sisters.
A cogent argument for gender parity and a revealing look at cultural change.Pub Date: Jan. 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-61893-155-9
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Time Inc. Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2015
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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