Sophisticated reporting full of unsettling revelations.
A British journalist examines our disposition to surrender freedoms in return for security and prosperity.
When the Berlin Wall fell 20 years ago and the Soviet Union imploded shortly thereafter, the future seemed bright for liberal democracies. After a year spent interviewing politicos, journalists, intellectuals and regular folks in eight countries, former New Statesman editor Kampfner (Blair’s Wars, 2004, etc.) submits an alarming report about the limits of our fealty to liberty and about how democratic involvement has not necessarily accompanied the creation of globalized wealth. The past two decades have witnessed the rise of authoritarian capitalism in nations like Singapore, where civil liberties are nonexistent and the populace, soothed by material comforts, refuses to rock the boat. In China the Communist Party uses opinion polls and focus groups to gauge the public mood and shudders to submit their economic miracle and the stability of their state to the vote of 800-million illiterate peasants. Russia’s regime has delivered just enough political stability and economic growth to appease a public resigned to the skimming of oil wealth by the “gold-digging elite” and the criminal underworld. The United Arab Emirates, busy building pleasure domes for tourists, cuts deals with Western governments and academic institutions that turn a blind eye to the ruling families’ repression of their subjects. In India the forms of democracy are observed, but globalization’s abundance has yet to trickle down to the vast majority of citizens. Most alarming, perhaps, is the author’s report from Britain and America, where in the wake of 9/11 citizens have permitted a diminution of civil liberties in exchange for promises of security. Will the worldwide economic downturn force any reconsideration of what’s been sacrificed during the drive for prosperity and swapped for illusions of safety? Not if—as Kampfner chillingly demonstrates—even in so-called free societies, our impulse to willingly obey appears to exceed our professed devotion to liberty.
Sophisticated reporting full of unsettling revelations.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-465-01539-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
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
PERSPECTIVES
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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