by John B. Judis ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 2000
The senior editor of the New Republic (Grand Illusion: Critics and Champions of the American Century, 1992, etc.) wonders how we can “strengthen our institutions” when they are so firmly in the grip of “vested interests.— Surveying the American landscape, Judis identifies a variety of problems that threaten our political integrity. He is most concerned with the enormous power now exercised by interest groups and lobbyists, and by the coalition of big business and conservative Republicans that has been able to thwart recent reform initiatives. Judis begins by examining the 1960s—a period he believes actually extended from the Rosa Parks incident (1955) to the resignation of President Nixon (1974). The radical left of that period, he maintains, “wielded enormous influence over the nation’s political and legislative agenda,” and produced necessary reform in race relations, environmental policy, and women’s issues. In response to what they viewed as a dangerous increase in the scope of the government, conservative foundations and business alliances began a campaign to alter public opinion, to create the perception that the government, rather than business, was “responsible for America’s ills.— Their success bore the fruits of the Reagan Revolution, the advent of centrist Democrats, the rise and fall of Newt Gingrich, the defeat of health care and campaign-finance reform, and the Clinton impeachment, which he characterizes as a “travesty of Constitutional government.— A clear-eyed marksman, Judis misses few targets: Henry Kissinger’s lobbying efforts “confirmed the public’s perception that everyone was for sale—; the post-—60s generation was “narcissistic”; Gingrich embraced “mundane and craven strategies.— To remedy our political ills, Judis prescribes several plans, including an effort to encourage our “best and brightest to serve rather than sell out.— Although Judis cuts a wide swath through the political right, his principal targets are greed and self-interest, two persistent and pervasive enemies of American democracy.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-679-43254-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1999
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by Paul Kalanithi ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 19, 2016
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
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A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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by Abhijit V. Banerjee & Esther Duflo ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 12, 2019
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
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