Provocative tale of US Latin-American policy, by a major participant. Wright gained notoriety in 1989 when he resigned as Speaker of the House because of financially based ethics charges (charges that, in light of the scandals that followed—S&L, BCCI, Iran- contra—may strike many as not terribly damning). Here, however, he focuses on the longtime role he played in Central American affairs. Wright suggests that, over a period of decades, policies intended to aid social progress in Latin America were first promoted (under JFK), then thought inconvenient (under LBJ, enmeshed in Vietnam), and finally considered a severe aggravation (under the Reagan Administration, which saw Central American nations as cold-war pawns). The bedrock of Wright's text is his long and successful personal experience with Latin Americans, going back to childhood. To those who see Central America in left/right political terms, the author says that what Latin Americans want is not speeches but clean water, bathrooms, and electricity. Damning incidents abound here, notably Congress's refusal to back Jimmy Carter's modest $75- million aid package to post-Somoza Nicaragua while the Cubans were sending teachers, health workers, and medical supplies—as well as the demise of an earlier plan, backed by US businessmen, to provide Dominicans with plants to process their own oranges and tomatoes. Wright sees these debacles as failures to compete with the left in nonmilitary terms. Meanwhile, his observations on CIA activity in the area, going back to the overthrow of Guatemala's Arbenz and Chile's Allende, make it plain that the Company (as well as some giant corporations) has for decades established the tone of our Latin American policy. Did the right do Wright in, as he charges here? Was he made an ``eye for an eye'' sacrifice to atone for the Senate's refusal to confirm conservative John Tower as Reagan's secretary of defense? Perhaps—but there's no question that Wright's memoir offers much stimulating food for thought. (First printing of 25,000)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-02-881075-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1993
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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