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BLOOD RANSOM

STORIES FROM THE FRONT LINE IN THE WAR AGAINST SOMALI PIRACY

An eye-opening look at what would seem a localized phenomenon but that has implications for developed–developing world...

What movie is in heavy rotation on DVD players in Mogadishu? Why, Captain Phillips, of course. And perhaps Black Hawk Down, too.

One consequence of Somalia’s being the poster child for libertarianism, writes documentary filmmaker Boyle, is that there is no effective government to stand up to the looters—not hungry Somalis but the fishing fleets from around the world that “have operated down the Somali coast unpoliced, unregulated and without licenses, for the best part of two decades.” Against these massive modern fishing fleets, Somalis with small boats and hand nets didn’t have a chance, and an estimated $300 million in fish was taken from Somali waters. Add to that illegal dumping of industrial waste—including nuclear waste—and it’s small wonder that Somalis are ticked off and ready to act on their anger by boarding those foreign vessels and taking a piece of the action. But how extensive is Somali piracy? The answer depends on whom you ask: an insurance company would say it’s epidemic, the State Department would say it’s under control, and the statistics go up and down depending on the intensity of anti-piracy measures. According to the British naval officer in charge of the intelligence-led interdiction program, “Somali piracy really spiked in 2008 and got the world’s attention.” The problem is ongoing, Boyle notes, but so is the rapaciousness of the foreign fleets—and piracy offers itself as one of the few growth industries in a country without much promise, such that “many more want to go out to sea than actually get asked.” Drawing on extensive interviews with aid workers, U.N. officials, naval personnel, and pirates themselves, the author pieces together a thoroughly well-constructed, swiftly paced account of what has become an intractable problem.

An eye-opening look at what would seem a localized phenomenon but that has implications for developed–developing world encounters generally.

Pub Date: July 7, 2015

ISBN: 978-1-4729-1267-1

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Review Posted Online: April 24, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2015

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BETWEEN THE WORLD AND ME

NOTES ON THE FIRST 150 YEARS IN AMERICA

This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”

Awards & Accolades

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  • Pulitzer Prize Finalist


  • National Book Award Winner

The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.

Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”

This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”

Pub Date: July 8, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7

Page Count: 176

Publisher: Spiegel & Grau

Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015

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GOOD ECONOMICS FOR HARD TIMES

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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