A deft, engaging portrait of a teeming, shape-shifting city.
A vigorous tour of Jerusalem in all its complexity.
In the three monotheist traditions, Jerusalem is a dreamlike place “of heavenly perfection, our city of joy”; it is also a distinctly physical entity that has endured enormous fracturing over the centuries. BBC journalist and travel writer Teller describes the lives of many of the city’s inhabitants as he attempts to reveal its contemporary essence. He ably investigates a crucial dichotomy: the “physical Jerusalem and [the] moral, spiritual one; an old, corrupted message and a new, clear one.” For ages, he writes, “it didn’t matter that the city had no river, no strategic value and no natural sources of commercial wealth. It had God.” Though accepted as the way it has always been, the division of the city into four quarters—Christian, Muslim, Armenian, and Jewish—actually occurred fairly arbitrarily in the mid-19th century thanks to British Protestant missionaries. Moving back and forth in time, Teller uses as a frame of reference the sequence of walls and gates implemented by Suleiman the Magnificent in the 16th century, taking readers through the labyrinthine neighborhoods that have grown up around those gates. The author chronicles his in-depth conversations with a wide, diverse swath of the population: Sufi mystics and religious figures of all kinds, of course, but also Palestinian, Indian, African, and Jewish shopkeepers; members of the Dom community (“socially, politically and economically these people are at the bottom of every heap”); and even “quadrilingual” Armenian rock star Apo Sahagian, who grew up in the Old City. Since the Six-Day War of 1967, citizen displacement has been widespread, and while Teller doesn’t delve deeply into this animus, the epilogue explores Palestinian restrictions and the toll of Partition. Overall, the author delivers an illuminating reexamination of an enduring city, a book that makes a satisfying complement to Andrew Lawler’s Under Jerusalem.
A deft, engaging portrait of a teeming, shape-shifting city.Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-63542-334-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Other Press
Review Posted Online: July 12, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
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
Deliberately provocative, with much for left-inclined activists to ponder.
A wide-ranging critique of leftist politics as not being left enough.
Continuing his examination of progressive reform movements begun with The Cult of Smart, Marxist analyst deBoer takes on a left wing that, like all political movements, is subject to “the inertia of established systems.” The great moment for the left, he suggests, ought to have been the summer of 2020, when the murder of George Floyd and the accumulated crimes of Donald Trump should have led to more than a minor upheaval. In Minneapolis, he writes, first came the call from the city council to abolish the police, then make reforms, then cut the budget; the grace note was “an increase in funding to the very department it had recently set about to dissolve.” What happened? The author answers with the observation that it is largely those who can afford it who populate the ranks of the progressive movement, and they find other things to do after a while, even as those who stand to benefit most from progressive reform “lack the cultural capital and economic stability to have a presence in our national media and politics.” The resulting “elite capture” explains why the Democratic Party is so ineffectual in truly representing minority and working-class constituents. Dispirited, deBoer writes, “no great American revolution is coming in the early twenty-first century.” Accommodation to gradualism was once counted heresy among doctrinaire Marxists, but deBoer holds that it’s likely the only truly available path toward even small-scale gains. Meanwhile, he scourges nonprofits for diluting the tax base. It would be better, he argues, to tax those who can afford it rather than allowing deductible donations and “reducing the availability of public funds for public uses.” Usefully, the author also argues that identity politics centering on difference will never build a left movement, which instead must find common cause against conservatism and fascism.
Deliberately provocative, with much for left-inclined activists to ponder.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9781668016015
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
