A concise and dispassionate analysis of the controversial president’s performance over the year since his unexpected...
This academic publication from the publisher’s First Year Project won’t generate the bombshell headlines of more sensationalist and gossipy books, but it provides context and balance for its conclusions, ones that are consistently at odds with Trump’s own assessment of his performance.
Nelson (Political Science/Rhodes Coll.; Resilient America: Electing Nixon, Channeling Dissent, and Dividing Government, 2014, etc.) compares Trump’s first year with the first years of other presidents, generally better versed in the ways of governing, and he concludes that “the most powerful office in the world is not an entry-level government job.” The author shows how the electorate was primed to support the celebrity outsider, seeing his lack of experience and connections as strengths rather than weaknesses. He also shows how the president’s lack of support within government circles, even within his own party, left him bereft when it came time to fill his Cabinet and make other crucial appointments and how his unpredictable temperament left him particularly unsuited for establishing policy. Instead, he “wasted much of the ten-week transition period, tossing aside the months of planning and research his team had done.” He frequently found himself making appointments to replace other appointments he had made, relying heavily on his vice president for recommendations because there were so few he knew and trusted that had the necessary experience. He vowed to stop tweeting once the candidate became president, and then continued anyway. He criticized his predecessor for overuse of the executive order and then issued a slew of them. His polarizing campaign never transitioned to unity once he became elected. “He displayed virtually no knowledge of history,” writes the author, and no understanding of the separation of power among branches of government or how to build coalitions to govern effectively. Most presidents improve at the job once they gain experience with it, but this analysis sees little reason for hope.
A concise and dispassionate analysis of the controversial president’s performance over the year since his unexpected election win.Pub Date: Jan. 22, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-8139-4144-8
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Univ. of Virginia
Review Posted Online: Jan. 13, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
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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