One doesn’t have to be as far left as most of these essayists to see the contradictions in the subject’s credentials as a...
A collection of essays from radical activists and academics eviscerating Hillary Clinton’s brand of feminism.
In “The Great Ambivalence,” professor Tressie McMillan Cottom confesses, “I want to trust Hillary Clinton more than I do,” which is a far more positive perspective on Clinton than the other essays display. As editor Featherstone (Selling Women Short: The Landmark Battle for Workers Rights at Wal-Mart, 2004, etc.) and contributor Amber A’Lee Frost argue in the introduction, “feminism is not an anatomical Super Bowl in which all adherents root for Team Vagina. Instead, feminism is a set of political ideas, or several sets of political ideas that are often wildly at odds. This book itself advances a vociferous disagreement with the type of feminism that has produced and sustained Hillary Rodham Clinton.” The charges against her range from her board membership with the anti-union Wal-Mart to her hawkishness as “the administration’s most vociferous advocate for military action” to her and her husband’s pivotal roles with the Democratic Leadership Council, which positioned the party away from liberal verities and toward a more conservative centrism. None of the charges are particularly revelatory, but the framing of them as a feminist critique of a feminist candidate can be devastating. Clinton’s support of so-called “welfare reform” and the war on drugs has been brutal toward minority women, though Clinton herself seems to separate gender issues from ones concerning race. In the concluding “Beyond Hillary,” feminist theorist Zillah Eisenstein writes, “Hillary Clinton’s brand of feminism—power feminism, imperial feminism, white ruling-class feminism—are [sic] not the answer to this moment of crisis. And the answer must be about so much more than gender.” Lest she emerge from these pages as the Lady Macbeth of presidential politics, the essays have plenty of ammunition reserved for her husband and take some shots at the current president.
One doesn’t have to be as far left as most of these essayists to see the contradictions in the subject’s credentials as a progressive feminist.Pub Date: June 14, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-78478-461-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Verso
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2016
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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