by Nancy Bradeen Spannaus ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 16, 2019
A thoughtful, well-written argument for Alexander Hamilton’s financial system as a guard against tyranny.
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A Hamilton enthusiast argues for his significance and contrasts his views with today’s world of finance.
In this debut history book, Spannaus builds on online writings about Alexander Hamilton’s political and financial theses to argue that he was and continues to be a driving force in shaping the American financial system and that—contrary to popular opinion—he would be more likely to oppose today’s shareholder value-driven business climate than to feel at home on 21st-century Wall Street. The book makes the case for Hamilton’s continuing relevance by arguing that his theories served as the basis for Abraham Lincoln’s and Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s policies, as well as those of several other countries, while Hamilton’s distance from Adam Smith sets the stage for an assessment of his opinions on modern corporations. Hamilton’s writings, particularly the Report on Manufactures, provide much of the basis for the book’s solid (if occasionally overenthusiastic, e.g., “Alexander Hamilton’s banking system was not British!”) analysis. However, the inclusion of active hyperlinks (i.e., “click here” in a physical book is sloppy, and it detracts from Spannaus’ effort to connect the reader to the book’s substantial base of primary and secondary historical sources. On the whole, though, Spannaus is a strong writer, making discussions of economic theory accessible and displaying a clear passion for her subject: “Now that Hamilton’s American System of economics has been virtually erased from popular memory, there is a real danger that our government will either collapse or cease to be a republic.” The book concludes with a Hamilton-inspired convincing proposal for a new infrastructure bank, an appropriate coda to a full-bodied and plausibly argued defense of his original vision for commerce in the United States.
A thoughtful, well-written argument for Alexander Hamilton’s financial system as a guard against tyranny.Pub Date: Feb. 16, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5320-6754-9
Page Count: 244
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Aug. 8, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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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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