by Mansoor Palloor ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 26, 2014
An ambitious but shrill gathering of political jeremiads.
A debut collection of essays denounces the misadventures of American imperialism.
According to Palloor, relentless American expansion and colonialism since Woodrow Wilson’s presidency is rooted in the notion of Manifest Destiny, a religiously inspired sense of moral exceptionalism. But though the world since the fall of the Soviet Union has been dominated by the unparalleled power—and unchecked arrogance—of the United States, its inevitable decline is certain to radically alter the geopolitical landscape. The diminishment of American influence can be diagnosed both militarily and economically. The U.S.’s repeated failures to impose its hegemony around the world—it keeps starting and losing wars—have undermined its credibility. And the eventual collapse of the dollar as the world’s default currency, the depletion of capitalism as a viable economic model, and the rise of China as a financial juggernaut will doom the nation’s economic supremacy. Palloor assembles 18 essays, each one perfectly comprehensible on its own independent of the others. The political terrain covered is expansive: the Arab Spring, the colonizing of Africa for the sake of plundering its mineral wealth, the conflict between Israel and Palestine, and the significance of Che Guevara to the Arab world, just to name a small representative sampling. The common thread that unites them all is the concern with imperialistic tyranny and the damage it has wrought all over the world. The author’s devotion to social justice is admirable, and the entire book is infused with a heartening solidarity with the oppressed. But the prose is as breathlessly immoderate as many of Palloor’s prognostications—one chapter is entitled “American Imperialism: A Menace While Breathing Its Last!” In addition, the author’s strident confidence in his own judgments isn’t matched by the empirical rigor with which he defends them. For example, his view that the U.S. is only interested in countering Iranian power for selfishly economic reasons is declared more than it is argued. Furthermore, some of the essays go back as far as 2001 and are dated—it seems odd now to trumpet the success of Venezuelan socialism while the nation slides into abject poverty.
An ambitious but shrill gathering of political jeremiads.Pub Date: Feb. 26, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4828-1391-3
Page Count: 122
Publisher: PartridgeIndia
Review Posted Online: Jan. 30, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Tom Clavin ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 21, 2020
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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by Steven Levitsky & Daniel Ziblatt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2018
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics,...
A provocative analysis of the parallels between Donald Trump’s ascent and the fall of other democracies.
Following the last presidential election, Levitsky (Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America, 2003, etc.) and Ziblatt (Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy, 2017, etc.), both professors of government at Harvard, wrote an op-ed column titled, “Is Donald Trump a Threat to Democracy?” The answer here is a resounding yes, though, as in that column, the authors underscore their belief that the crisis extends well beyond the power won by an outsider whom they consider a demagogue and a liar. “Donald Trump may have accelerated the process, but he didn’t cause it,” they write of the politics-as-warfare mentality. “The weakening of our democratic norms is rooted in extreme partisan polarization—one that extends beyond policy differences into an existential conflict over race and culture.” The authors fault the Republican establishment for failing to stand up to Trump, even if that meant electing his opponent, and they seem almost wistfully nostalgic for the days when power brokers in smoke-filled rooms kept candidacies restricted to a club whose members knew how to play by the rules. Those supporting the candidacy of Bernie Sanders might take as much issue with their prescriptions as Trump followers will. However, the comparisons they draw to how democratic populism paved the way toward tyranny in Peru, Venezuela, Chile, and elsewhere are chilling. Among the warning signs they highlight are the Republican Senate’s refusal to consider Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee as well as Trump’s demonization of political opponents, minorities, and the media. As disturbing as they find the dismantling of Democratic safeguards, Levitsky and Ziblatt suggest that “a broad opposition coalition would have important benefits,” though such a coalition would strike some as a move to the center, a return to politics as usual, and even a pragmatic betrayal of principles.
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics, rather than in the consensus it is not likely to build.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6293-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
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