Here’s a report that could be a handbook for programmers of afternoon talk shows: “Teens Who Murder Their Parents,” “Mothers Who Kill Their Newborns.” Kelleher has written much on violence (Murder Most Rare, not reviewed, etc.) and consults for public and private organizations on threat assessment. Here he sets out to examine the backgrounds of young people from stable and supportive families who, with no warning, put bullets through their parents’ heads or slaughter a best friend. By knowing more about those savage acts, we can head off increased violence from the baby boomlet now heading into its teens, Kelleher theorizes. He then proceeds to lay out case history after case history of “neonaticides” (babies killed at birth by their usually teenage mothers), parricides (children who kill their parents), cult killers, and thrill killers, each crime seemingly bloodier than the one before. The executioners are often, but not always, older teens; usually, but not exclusively, boys; and frequently examples in the community: altar boys, honor students, star athletes, without a blemish on their records. Why do these children burst loose in a flood of rage that lets them gun down a friend or a playground full of school mates? They cannot explain it themselves, except in the most prosaic terms: “ . . . tired of doing the household chores,” said one, typically. It is difficult, if not impossible to distinguish these teens’ protests against parental rules from the normal adolescent resistance to curfews and family strictures. Kelleher agrees, “We do not understand why . . . ,” offering finally some uncertain psychological speculation, advice to parents to love and listen to their children (although many of the parents described here seemed to do just that), and some discussion of the increasingly tough laws mandating that children who commit violent crimes be tried as adults. Voyeurism takes the reins over insight into “good kids” who murder; sadly, we are no better off than when we began in understanding the “why.”
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-275-96410-8
Page Count: 232
Publisher: Praeger
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1998
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
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.
Known for her often contentious perspectives, New York Times opinion writer Weiss battles societal Jewish intolerance through lucid prose and a linear playbook of remedies.
While she was vividly aware of anti-Semitism throughout her life, the reality of the problem hit home when an active shooter stormed a Pittsburgh synagogue where her family regularly met for morning services and where she became a bat mitzvah years earlier. The massacre that ensued there further spurred her outrage and passionate activism. She writes that European Jews face a three-pronged threat in contemporary society, where physical, moral, and political fears of mounting violence are putting their general safety in jeopardy. She believes that Americans live in an era when “the lunatic fringe has gone mainstream” and Jews have been forced to become “a people apart.” With palpable frustration, she adroitly assesses the origins of anti-Semitism and how its prevalence is increasing through more discreet portals such as internet self-radicalization. Furthermore, the erosion of civility and tolerance and the demonization of minorities continue via the “casual racism” of political figures like Donald Trump. Following densely political discourses on Zionism and radical Islam, the author offers a list of bullet-point solutions focused on using behavioral and personal action items—individual accountability, active involvement, building community, loving neighbors, etc.—to help stem the tide of anti-Semitism. Weiss sounds a clarion call to Jewish readers who share her growing angst as well as non-Jewish Americans who wish to arm themselves with the knowledge and intellectual tools to combat marginalization and defuse and disavow trends of dehumanizing behavior. “Call it out,” she writes. “Especially when it’s hard.” At the core of the text is the author’s concern for the health and safety of American citizens, and she encourages anyone “who loves freedom and seeks to protect it” to join with her in vigorous activism.
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-593-13605-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2019
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