A polemic maintaining that the death penalty is cruel and unfair, that it doesn't prevent crime, and that it can be replaced by a sentence of life without parole (LWOP). Although in his introduction Costanzo (Social Psychology/Claremont McKenna Coll.) says he is attempting ``a critical analysis of the costs, benefits, and consequences of the death penalty,'' he evokes emotion as readily as he does reason. For those who prefer the sensational, he describes death-row existence, executions gone awry, and the grief of having a family member sentenced to death. For those preferring to build arguments, he suggests some useful points: Death-penalty trials and appeals are so long, complicated, and expensive that we can save money by abolishing execution; having a court-appointed lawyer and being black (especially if the victim is white) increase a defendant's chances of being sentenced to death; the death penalty is ineffective as a deterrent, because most murders are not premeditated acts but crimes of passion. In its better moments, the book gathers from other sources glimpses of the legal system that will give a reader pause, e.g., the judge who instructed a jury to weigh ``mitigating'' and ``aggravating'' factors when determining a sentence but refused to tell jurors what the words meant. Less impressive are times one suspects gaps in the presentation, most problematically in the endorsement of LWOP to replace the death penalty. Costanzo notes some people's fear that those who have, in his words, committed ``murders so vile that they defy understanding'' can someday walk free and adds that ``most judges'' won't assure jurors that the LWOP sentence precludes eventual release. However, rather than exploring this judicial reluctance, he blithely insists that LWOP constitutes an ``ironclad guarantee'' that such murderers will stay in prison. For some, Costanzo's guarantee may not suffice. This volume is as likely to annoy as to persuade those who support the death penalty, but its opponents will find a disappointingly modest handful of ammunition. (For another look at the death penalty, see John D. Bessler, Death in the Dark: Midnight Executions in America, p. 1424.)
Pub Date: Nov. 18, 1997
ISBN: 0-312-15559-X
Page Count: 224
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1997
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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