by Matt Apuzzo ; Adam Goldman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 3, 2013
A fast-paced, informative investigation into the ever-messy arena of privacy versus security.
Pulitzer Prize–winning AP journalists Apuzzo and Goldman reveal the details of the NYPD’s post-9/11 counterterrorism intelligence unit amid the almost-undetected 2009 plot to bomb the subway system.
To account for the systemic failure of government agencies to stop the Sept. 11 attacks and to ensure that all future terrorist plots would be snuffed out, the NYPD began an unprecedented intelligence-gathering campaign to bolster anti-terrorism security. The newly formed Intelligence Division was unlike any municipal law enforcement department in the nation. Headed by former CIA analyst David Cohen, with the support of Commissioner Ray Kelly, the I.D. began operating like an international spy unit rather than a division of the police department. Among the many controversial practices put into place by Cohen was the deliberate and methodical surveillance of Muslim neighborhoods throughout the city. The cops charged with collecting this information, known as “rakers,” would draft reports of their surveillance on Muslim businesses, mosques and social clubs, however trivial, misleading or erroneous the information. The goal of the project was to identify areas of radicalization and pinpoint possible terrorists before they could act. However, despite the department’s best efforts to map Muslim activities, three young New Yorkers began plotting the most significant attack on the city since 9/11. Najibullah Zazi, Adis Medunjanin and Zarein Ahmedzay were all naturalized American citizens, yet they, too, were seduced by jihad and even traveled to an al-Qaida training camp in Pakistan. While Apuzzo and Goldman show their veteran reportorial skills in exposing the details of the NYPD’s surveillance program, they also expertly craft the drama of the unfolding terrorist plot and the race by government agencies to foil it. For all its fastidiousness, the efficacy of the I.D.’s methods has been hotly debated, and evidence presented by the authors suggests that there is no direct link between the data collected by the department and a reduction in terrorism.
A fast-paced, informative investigation into the ever-messy arena of privacy versus security.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4767-2793-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2013
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by Paul Kalanithi ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 19, 2016
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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by Abhijit V. Banerjee & Esther Duflo ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 12, 2019
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
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