A veteran advocate for mixing rather than segregating the generations returns with a volume whose title is hyperbolic but whose subtitle tells the story.
Social entrepreneur Freedman (The Big Shift: Navigating the New Stage Beyond Midlife, 2011, etc.) writes that he’s “never much trusted self-help books or advice,” but he’s written one of the former and dispenses plenty of the latter. Regardless, the author’s principal point is important: The warehousing of our elderly, the establishment of elder-only communities all over the Southwest and elsewhere—these are turning out to be grievous wounds that we are inflicting upon ourselves. Their existence and proliferation deny the young easy access to the experience and wisdom of their elders, and they also deny (or make difficult) opportunities for older Americans to employ the skills—social, intellectual, emotional—that so many of them possess, skills that could have great social benefit. One of the strengths of the book is Freedman’s use of specifics: He tells stories about people who are doing what he advocates, communities that are working to mix the old and the young, and programs that he thinks are hopeful, including his own Generation to Generation, part of his organization encore.org. He also celebrates some individuals who have had an enduring effect on his own thinking and life, most notably the late John W. Gardner, the author of such classics as Excellence: Can We Be Equal and Excellent Too? (1961), a man whom Freedman revered and who, the author tells us, once said that Freedman was like the son he never had. The author’s tone is enthusiastic and hopeful throughout, but the diction is occasionally clichéd (“the road hasn’t been entirely smooth”). Nonetheless, his enthusiasm is infectious and affecting, and his agenda bristles with sincerity and significance.
A book that grabs us by the shoulders, turns us toward an important issue, and grips us until we truly see and understand.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5417-6781-2
Page Count: 224
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Sept. 17, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2018
Categories: CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS
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A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
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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
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“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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