by Mike German ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 10, 2019
Important reading for our current time, especially as the Mueller Report continues to circulate.
A well-documented exposé explaining how 9/11 transformed the FBI into an agency “using its enhanced national security powers to silence whistleblowers, suppress minority communities, intimidate dissidents, and undermine democratic controls over its operations.”
When he entered the agency in 1988, German (Thinking Like a Terrorist: Insights of a Former FBI Undercover Agent, 2007) found himself admiring many of his fellow agents. However, he gradually began to realize that the FBI top brass—including Robert Mueller and James Comey—presided over an organization rife with sexism, racism, xenophobia, and resistance to honorable agents who pointed out problems through the chain of command. After 9/11—which many believed could have been avoided if the FBI, CIA, and other entities had performed their jobs better—German watched as Islamophobia infected the FBI from the top down. He departed in 2004 but kept a close watch using his own knowledge and that of the whistleblowers still inside. In an unusual move for a former FBI agent, German joined the staff of the American Civil Liberties Union, where he gained a finely honed appreciation of how the FBI routinely violated the rights of Muslims, African Americans, Native Americans, and many other nonwhite citizens. The author developed an especially acute sense of how FBI leadership downplayed the widespread dangers of heavily armed white nationalists, many of whom took their cues from the domestic terrorists responsible for the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. In addition to developing his theme of misplaced priorities within federal and local law enforcement, German returns frequently to convincing evidence that foreign terrorists who orchestrated 9/11 would strike again inside the United States through a hidden network of sleeper cells. German bemoans the fact that by successfully spreading fear within a dysfunctional federal government—and ineffective FBI—terrorists ripped the fabric of American democracy, perhaps beyond repair. “The FBI,” he writes, “cannot remain effective without public confidence in its work, and regaining this faith should be its top priority.”
Important reading for our current time, especially as the Mueller Report continues to circulate.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-62097-379-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: The New Press
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019
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by Paul Kalanithi ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 19, 2016
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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by Abhijit V. Banerjee & Esther Duflo ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 12, 2019
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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