A cogent, thorough historical study of the gathering global momentum in holding state officials accountable for human-rights abuses, from Nuremberg to Guantánamo.
The trend toward human-rights activism throughout the 20th century, galvanized especially around opposition to the repressive military dictatorships in Argentina and Chile, has created what Sikkink (Political Science/Univ. of Minnesota) views as a deeply hopeful “justice cascade.” Oriented in her research toward Latin America, the author concentrates mainly on the emergent groups that exposed abuses in those countries, which in turn empowered others to create “truth commissions” in the wake of violent official abuses, such as South Africa and the former Yugoslavia. Despite the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials after World War II, which put in place the model for state accountability, the enforcement of human-rights abuses lost steam mainly because the criminal leaders themselves still claimed immunity. In Greece and Portugal by the mid ’70s, however, domestic courts held unprecedented trials of military personnel for crimes committed during their previous military dictatorships—unlike in Spain, where the passage of time and the Amnesty Law of 1977 blocked persecution of abuses perpetrated during General Franco’s four-decade dictatorship. Human-rights organizations in support of the “disappeared” of Argentina ensured that Raúl Alfonsín’s democratic government held trials—in turn setting off an outcry for accountability in neighboring Brazil, Uruguay and Bolivia, making possible the extradition arrest of General Pinochet in 1998 and paving the way for the creation of the International Criminal Court and other important checks. Sikkink structures her fairly academic but highly readable study in three parts: the emergence of the zeitgeist, spurred by the American opposition to the Vietnam War in the late ’60s; the diffusion of the ideas of accountability; and the impact of deterring world leaders from criminal activity—e.g., Bush administration officials being held accountable for torture cases at secret detention centers. A distinguished work involving a significant marshalling of statistics and evidence that signals enormous hope for humanity in the coming century.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-393-07993-7
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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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