Wali leaves no stone unturned in this thoroughly researched analysis of the successes, failures and struggles of the Nigerian government in Sokoto State between 1976 and 1991.
In his exhaustively researched new study, Wali analyzes the social, cultural and economic obstacles Nigeria faces in its quest to modernize and improve the standard of living. The author seeks to explain why, in spite of the country’s relative wealth of human and natural resources, the great majority of Nigerians still struggle with crushing poverty. For a great many of the country’s citizens, there is very limited access to basics such as health care, education, clean water and safe housing. Wali shows how political instability, corruption and prejudice, among other factors, conspire to prevent policy implementation of what, on paper, can seem to be perfect solutions. While the author’s research is beyond reproach, his prose is often dense and impenetrable. The book is full of dry, circular sentences such as “without a goal, implementation will have no focus ... and there will be nothing to implement. In other words, there is no implementation without policy, but there may be policies waiting for implementation.” The various tables and charts, however, are much more instructive. As a former politician and ambassador, the author must have plenty of personal experience and anecdotes to draw from, but instead readers get numbing, policy-wonk descriptions of how the elaborate bureaucracy works—or more often, doesn’t work. As a result, no one he writes about feels like a real person. Even though Wali was on the ground to experience most of these issues, this volume reads like the work of an outsider peering in at the inner workings of the Nigerian state. A more personable tone, real-world examples and a less rigid structural format would have improved readability and greatly clarified the author’s message. An extremely valuable resource for political science students and those studying African economies and governments, but the author will have difficulty finding an audience beyond academia.
Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2010
ISBN: 978-1450217972
Page Count: 252
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: April 17, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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