An appeal to critical thought and broad values for young Muslims.
Ghobash, ambassador of the United Arab Emirates to Russia, presents a series of open letters crafted for his young sons as they grow up Muslim in the modern world. The author has a unique background: his mother is Russian, and his father was Arab. Moreover, his father was assassinated when a supporter of the Palestinian cause mistook him for another man who was a political target. The author was a young boy at the time of his father’s death, and he has spent a lifetime reflecting on what senseless violence did to him and his family. He has written these letters to his own sons—born in 2000 and 2004—in order to provide them with written accounts of his own values and thoughts on Islam. Throughout, he asks them to consider varying points of view, do their own research, and make up their own minds. Ghobash seems most intent on convincing his sons to think for themselves rather than to allow clerics, scholars, and activists to influence their thinking. The author states unequivocally “Islam is a religion of peace,” and then spends an entire chapter discussing what that statement really means, given the reality of violence in the world. He urges his sons to “see the world through the prism of responsibility,” as he himself does, doing what is right and caring for the needs of others. “We need to take responsibility for the Islam of peace,” he concludes. Ghobash takes largely liberal views on many issues, such as the role of women in society. He seems interestingly reticent on proclaiming strong views about the leadership and direction of Islam or passing anything but the most general judgment upon extremists.
Laced with Western pluralism and liberalism, the author tries to push back the rigid moralism of Islam as he has often known it. Certainly heartfelt, the book is also reserved and largely unemotional.Pub Date: Jan. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-250-11984-1
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Picador
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2016
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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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“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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