by Mohammed Al-Shamsi ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 2, 2020
A thorough yet elitist program for Saudi Arabia’s economic revitalization centered on scientific development.
A professor offers a comprehensive plan for the revival of Saudi Arabia’s research and innovation sector.
Al-Shamsi, a professor of civil engineering at Riyadh’s King Abdulaziz City for Science & Technology, begins his work by harkening back to Islam’s golden age. From Cordoba to Baghdad, Muslims exported scientific breakthroughs across Europe, Asia, and Africa. With God’s help and a remodeling of Saudi Arabia’s national research and innovation system, he hopes that Muslims can again lead the world in exporting significant scientific advances. One of the biggest obstacles the author sees is the country’s current system of funding subcontractors to conduct research. Far too often, subcontractors divert their funding to foreign researchers and academic institutions for self-promotion and publication in prestigious international scientific journals. This undermines the Saudi research and development system by using limited government money to support foreign institutions. Moreover, despite thriving Saudi petrochemical, oil, and date industries, foreign governments and businesses not only manufacture their “entire production lines,” but also continue to wield influence by controlling the technical expertise necessary to maintain them. This reliance on foreign nations for technology and expertise also applies to the Saudi military. For Al-Shamsi, economic independence and homeland security will only be guaranteed by a new era of Arab innovation that serves the interests not just of individual researchers, but the nation as well. The author proposes dozens of intriguing ideas on how the Saudi government can foster homegrown innovation. These include the creation of new government councils that report directly to the prime minister, new patent laws and greater protections on intellectual property, and the funding of Saudi industrial expositions and scientific journals. Overflowing with national pride, this book will surely appeal to anyone interested in internal reform revolving around economic progress in the Arab world. But while the benefits of a scientific revolution may ultimately trickle down to the masses, the work’s target audience comprises government and business leaders. Reforms in human and civil rights are noticeably absent from a volume that focuses on reestablishing Saudi Arabia as an innovator of scientific ideas.
A thorough yet elitist program for Saudi Arabia’s economic revitalization centered on scientific development.Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-71447-820-0
Page Count: 182
Publisher: Blurb
Review Posted Online: April 28, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Walter Isaacson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 12, 2023
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.
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New York Times Bestseller
A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting.
To call Elon Musk (b. 1971) “mercurial” is to undervalue the term; to call him a genius is incorrect. Instead, Musk has a gift for leveraging the genius of others in order to make things work. When they don’t, writes eminent biographer Isaacson, it’s because the notoriously headstrong Musk is so sure of himself that he charges ahead against the advice of others: “He does not like to share power.” In this sharp-edged biography, the author likens Musk to an earlier biographical subject, Steve Jobs. Given Musk’s recent political turn, born of the me-first libertarianism of the very rich, however, Henry Ford also comes to mind. What emerges clearly is that Musk, who may or may not have Asperger’s syndrome (“Empathy did not come naturally”), has nurtured several obsessions for years, apart from a passion for the letter X as both a brand and personal name. He firmly believes that “all requirements should be treated as recommendations”; that it is his destiny to make humankind a multi-planetary civilization through innovations in space travel; that government is generally an impediment and that “the thought police are gaining power”; and that “a maniacal sense of urgency” should guide his businesses. That need for speed has led to undeniable successes in beating schedules and competitors, but it has also wrought disaster: One of the most telling anecdotes in the book concerns Musk’s “demon mode” order to relocate thousands of Twitter servers from Sacramento to Portland at breakneck speed, which trashed big parts of the system for months. To judge by Isaacson’s account, that may have been by design, for Musk’s idea of creative destruction seems to mean mostly chaos.
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9781982181284
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
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by Walter Isaacson with adapted by Sarah Durand
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by Fredrik deBoer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 5, 2023
Deliberately provocative, with much for left-inclined activists to ponder.
A wide-ranging critique of leftist politics as not being left enough.
Continuing his examination of progressive reform movements begun with The Cult of Smart, Marxist analyst deBoer takes on a left wing that, like all political movements, is subject to “the inertia of established systems.” The great moment for the left, he suggests, ought to have been the summer of 2020, when the murder of George Floyd and the accumulated crimes of Donald Trump should have led to more than a minor upheaval. In Minneapolis, he writes, first came the call from the city council to abolish the police, then make reforms, then cut the budget; the grace note was “an increase in funding to the very department it had recently set about to dissolve.” What happened? The author answers with the observation that it is largely those who can afford it who populate the ranks of the progressive movement, and they find other things to do after a while, even as those who stand to benefit most from progressive reform “lack the cultural capital and economic stability to have a presence in our national media and politics.” The resulting “elite capture” explains why the Democratic Party is so ineffectual in truly representing minority and working-class constituents. Dispirited, deBoer writes, “no great American revolution is coming in the early twenty-first century.” Accommodation to gradualism was once counted heresy among doctrinaire Marxists, but deBoer holds that it’s likely the only truly available path toward even small-scale gains. Meanwhile, he scourges nonprofits for diluting the tax base. It would be better, he argues, to tax those who can afford it rather than allowing deductible donations and “reducing the availability of public funds for public uses.” Usefully, the author also argues that identity politics centering on difference will never build a left movement, which instead must find common cause against conservatism and fascism.
Deliberately provocative, with much for left-inclined activists to ponder.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9781668016015
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
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