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THE NEXT AMERICAN NATION

THE NEW NATIONALISM AND THE FOURTH AMERICAN REVOLUTION

Neoconservative gadfly Lind bites fiercely at right and left- -and just about every American institution in between. The author, executive editor of the National Interest, has garnered much attention with his articles on the decline of intellectual conservatism, immigration reform, and other touchy subjects. His first book will add fuel to several fires he's already set. Seeking to define the American character—a construct that seems increasingly abstract in the era of culture wars, canon reform, and the Republican Third Revolution—Lind traces the transformation of American society from its English origins to its multicultural present, a trajectory that he handles with all the depth of a junior-college survey course. He is more interesting when he moves into more controversial areas. Quoting Lyndon Johnson approvingly, he demands that the United States establish a policy of zero-net immigration and ask of would-be citizens, ``What can you do for our country?'' Defending his position at length, he decries conservative nativism and liberal relativism alike, arguing that unskilled immigration works to the disadvantage of the American underclass and benefits only the wealthy. He has unkind words for current smash-the-welfare-state dogma, remarking that ``the white overclass can afford to be indifferent to the decline of the wages and quality of life of the average American because its members have devised ways to insulate themselves from rotting cities, poor jobs, crumbling urban public schools, wandering maniacs, crime.'' No orthodoxy escapes Lind, whose text provides endless material for debate. His fondness for hyperbole and farfetched historical analogies sometimes undermines his arguments, and many readers will dismiss his simplistic call for a western European cultural ideal based on multiparty democracy and proportional representation as no more than a pipe dream. (For another look at redefining American identity, see David A. Hollinger, Postethnic America, p. 608.) Still, an intelligent albeit unfocused foray, far richer—and much worthier of serious consideration—than the usual polemic.

Pub Date: July 4, 1995

ISBN: 0-02-919103-3

Page Count: 350

Publisher: Free Press

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1995

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WHEN BREATH BECOMES AIR

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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GOOD ECONOMICS FOR HARD TIMES

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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