Considering that there’s no lack of homegrown fascists to worry about, this wacky book is the equivalent of a Chicken Little...
Nazis killed Kennedy! Nazis control Wall Street! Nazis are fluoridating the water supply! Nazis are overhead, zooming across the sky in UFOs!
One used to read such things in a couple of sources back in the day: John Birch Society pamphlets and the Illuminatus! trilogy fringe of the sci-fi set. We suppose those authors were serious, if perhaps out of their minds. Certainly Marrs—whose 1989 book Crossfire was the basis of the Oliver Stone conspiracy-fest movie JFK—seems to be serious, even though he eases off on the pedal, as if a touch embarrassed, when his charges get too weird. Thus, after excitedly postulating that Hitler escaped the bunker in 1945, Marrs (Rule By Secrecy: The Hidden History That Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons and the Great Pyramids, 2000, etc.) clears his throat to say that Hitler’s fate “is immaterial, a moot point. What is certain is that Hitler’s legacy—National Socialism—lives on.” True, in little backwater towns in Pomerania and Alabama where subpar proletarians fear not being part of the master race. But at Yale? According to the author, yes. Skull and Bones, proud fraternity of Bush and Kerry, is “merely the Illuminati in disguise,” and one of its songs is to the tune of Deutschland Über Alles (“The Germany Song”). Given that Skull and Bones and the Mormons populate the ranks of the CIA, well, small wonder that JFK got popped. He knew too much, you see, about time-traveling Nazis—oh, yes, the German scientists whom we brought over after World War II had some very sophisticated physics at their service, and they all went to work for Lockheed, Martin Marietta and other defense contractors “when many American engineers in the aircraft industry were being laid off.” (Duh! The Americans didn’t know how to time travel.) And as for the Cold War space race? The Nazis were in charge on both sides of the Iron Curtain. But wouldn’t that imply that the Soviet and American governments were one and the same?
Considering that there’s no lack of homegrown fascists to worry about, this wacky book is the equivalent of a Chicken Little story. Caveat lector.Pub Date: July 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-06-124558-9
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
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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