Aggressive title aside, this is a carefully argued call for action on a problem that is only going to get worse.
Kroenig (Government/Georgetown Univ.; Exporting the Bomb: Technology Transfer and the Spread of Nuclear Weapons, 2010, etc.) explains why we need to prepare to bomb Iran.
This is no neoconservative cheerleading for another Middle East war; Kroenig knows that nobody has the stomach for that. As a former special adviser for Iranian affairs to the secretary of defense, however, he also fully understands the challenge that a militant Iran presents to American foreign policy goals worldwide, particularly the enforcement of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and, thus, the prevention of a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. The author’s analysis is well-organized, thorough, and presented in clear, simple language. He explains why a nuclear-armed Iran would cause extensive problems for America and its allies and severely damage the credibility of American guarantees; three presidents have, after all, stated emphatically that they would not permit Iran to obtain the bomb. Kroenig would prefer to resolve the issue through diplomacy, but he doubts it can be done, contending that we have nothing to offer that could persuade Iran to give up joining the nuclear club. Meanwhile, the centrifuges are spinning; Iran may have enough fissionable material to start building nuclear bombs within 14 months, at which point they cannot be stopped. Kroenig is not advocating regime change by invasion, only a surgical attack on the uranium and plutonium production sites. He discusses at length the difficulties involved in such operations, the likely blowback and the alternative of containing a nuclear Iran, but he concludes that if diplomacy fails, a bombing run is the “least bad” option. If one accepts his premises—and not all analysts do—the logic of Kroenig’s position is inexorable and the conclusion, as unavoidable as it is unwelcome.
Aggressive title aside, this is a carefully argued call for action on a problem that is only going to get worse.Pub Date: May 13, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-137-27953-8
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2014
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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