Useful and interesting socialist takes on 20th-century history, but far short of the compelling social prophecy to which it...
An analysis of 20th-century social reform that explores Western history and economics in order to comment on the current state and future prospects of socialism.
The 1989 Eastern European revolutions, the disintegration of the Soviet Union, and China’s slow but steady implementation of capitalist reforms cause many political commentators to dismiss socialism as an outdated and discredited philosophy. Birnbaum (The Crisis of Industrial Society, not reviewed) provides his new social history in response to such assertions. Offering as his foundation a detailed chronicle of reform movements in the United States, Great Britain, France, Germany, and Italy, Birnbaum detects key shifts in social concerns over the course of the century. He argues that these Western nations reacted to the totalitarian nature of the Stalinist Soviet state by approaching social reform tentatively rather than embracing socialist doctrine. According to Birnbaum, this resulted in the rise of Reaganism and Thatcherism and a corresponding loss of faith in the Marxist idea of historical progression. Despite the beleaguered state of socialism today, Birnbaum sees hope for the socialist spirit. He points to Americans’ dedication to New Deal and Great Society programs like Social Security and Medicare, and to the entrenched social welfare systems of Western Europe as evidence that a reimagined and reinvigorated socialism waits to burst upon the international scene. Birnbaum’s failure to offer clear indications about what direction this might take creates an effect opposite to that he wants to produce: rather than inspiring hope for the future of socialism, his analysis leaves the reader feeling that its chances of revival are slim indeed.
Useful and interesting socialist takes on 20th-century history, but far short of the compelling social prophecy to which it aspires.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-19-512005-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2000
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
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
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