Boot’s generally evenhanded approach makes some of his more immodest proposals palatable, and serious students of foreign...
A thoughtful history cum policy paper on the role of guerrilla warfare in the building of the American empire.
No stranger to polemic as editorial features editor for the Wall Street Journal, Boot (Out of Order, 1998) has little use for the so-called Powell Doctrine limiting American soldiers’ exposure to the possibility of dying in combat. When applied in Iraq with the decision not to topple Saddam Hussein’s government after the liberation of Kuwait, that doctrine may have helped avoid a “Persian Gulf Vietnam,” as Colin Powell said it would, but instead, Boot writes, “it turned into a Persian Gulf Hungary, a replay of 1956, when the U.S. encouraged a rebellion against the Soviets and then stood by as the rebels were crushed.” An unapologetic imperialist, the author urges that America take its superpower and world-policeman roles seriously, stepping into “small wars” (Haiti, Kosovo, Afghanistan) to fearlessly pursue “punitive and protective missions.” Along the way, Boot examines the little conflicts of the past that citizen-soldiers have not much enjoyed but professionals have gladly undertaken: here the suppression of the Filipino revolt from 1898 to1902, there a modest 1871 invasion of Korea and the occupation of the Dominican Republic in 1954. He shrugs aside the specter of collateral damage, asserting that, “although wars against guerrillas tend to be particularly savage, atrocities are endemic to all wars, not just colonial ones.” More compelling is his Monday morning quarterback analysis of Vietnam, which he argues could have yielded American victory had it been fought not as a conventional conflict but as a guerrilla war, an approach for which commanding general William C. Westmoreland was neither equipped nor trained.
Boot’s generally evenhanded approach makes some of his more immodest proposals palatable, and serious students of foreign policy, no matter what their leanings, will want to entertain his arguments.Pub Date: May 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-465-00720-1
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2002
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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