An invigorating book with much fodder for thought on this side of the Atlantic.
Vigorous polemic on the makeup of England’s ruling elite, with eerie parallels to the inequality in the United States.
Guardian columnist Jones (Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class, 2012) embarks on another scathing examination of British systemic ailments by directly challenging the powerful interest groups that essentially rule the country. Politicians, financial titans, media barons, and an authoritative police force form the pillars of society, and since the 1950s, when Britain collectively shook off the “defeatism” and “permissiveness” of the postwar era in order to embrace an “open economy,” these pillars have turned increasingly reactionary. Where once the aristocracy and Church of England formed the Establishment (both still hold enormous tracts of land, the author notes), the “outriders” who championed the return to laissez faire economics at the Mont Pelerin Society of 1947 (Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman et al.) got their deliverance with the accession of Margaret Thatcher in the 1970s. They forged a new Establishment, founded on free market principles and libertarian philosophy. In the U.S. under Ronald Reagan, that philosophy was reflected in the attempt to roll back FDR’s New Deal and LBJ’s Great Society programs. Jones looks at the role of conservative think tanks, such as the powerful Institute of Economic Affairs, in launching an all-out offensive on the working class, the trade unions, and the “little people.” This offensive often goes hand in hand with a 24-hour news cycle that popularizes their ideas to the public. In successive chapters, the author tackles one pillar after the other: the “Westminster Cartel”; a dishonest, corporate-fed media playing into racism and other prejudices (e.g., the Rupert Murdoch press); the “boys in blue,” who are authorized to use unlawful force; and tax dodgers and financiers operating with impunity. The supreme irony, Jones emphasizes, is that these “free-market” pillars actually derive their power from the “largesse of the state.”
An invigorating book with much fodder for thought on this side of the Atlantic.Pub Date: April 21, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-61219-487-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Melville House
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2015
However charily one should apply the word, a beautiful book, an unconditionally involving memoir for our time or any time.
Maya Angelou is a natural writer with an inordinate sense of life and she has written an exceptional autobiographical narrative which retrieves her first sixteen years from "the general darkness just beyond the great blinkers of childhood."
Her story is told in scenes, ineluctably moving scenes, from the time when she and her brother were sent by her fancy living parents to Stamps, Arkansas, and a grandmother who had the local Store. Displaced they were and "If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat." But alternating with all the pain and terror (her rape at the age of eight when in St. Louis With her mother) and humiliation (a brief spell in the kitchen of a white woman who refused to remember her name) and fear (of a lynching—and the time they buried afflicted Uncle Willie under a blanket of vegetables) as well as all the unanswered and unanswerable questions, there are affirmative memories and moments: her charming brother Bailey; her own "unshakable God"; a revival meeting in a tent; her 8th grade graduation; and at the end, when she's sixteen, the birth of a baby. Times When as she says "It seemed that the peace of a day's ending was an assurance that the covenant God made with children, Negroes and the crippled was still in effect."
However charily one should apply the word, a beautiful book, an unconditionally involving memoir for our time or any time.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1969
ISBN: 0375507892
Page Count: 235
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1969
SEEN & HEARD
IN THE NEWS
SEEN & HEARD
A welcome addition to the literature on immigration told by an author who understands the issue like few others.
The debut book from “one of the first undocumented immigrants to graduate from Harvard.”
In addition to delivering memorable portraits of undocumented immigrants residing precariously on Staten Island and in Miami, Cleveland, Flint, and New Haven, Cornejo Villavicencio, now enrolled in the American Studies doctorate program at Yale, shares her own Ecuadorian family story (she came to the U.S. at age 5) and her anger at the exploitation of hardworking immigrants in the U.S. Because the author fully comprehends the perils of undocumented immigrants speaking to journalist, she wisely built trust slowly with her subjects. Her own undocumented status helped the cause, as did her Spanish fluency. Still, she protects those who talked to her by changing their names and other personal information. Consequently, readers must trust implicitly that the author doesn’t invent or embellish. But as she notes, “this book is not a traditional nonfiction book….I took notes by hand during interviews and after the book was finished, I destroyed those notes.” Recounting her travels to the sites where undocumented women, men, and children struggle to live above the poverty line, she reports her findings in compelling, often heart-wrenching vignettes. Cornejo Villavicencio clearly shows how employers often cheat day laborers out of hard-earned wages, and policymakers and law enforcement agents exist primarily to harm rather than assist immigrants who look and speak differently. Often, cruelty arrives not only in economic terms, but also via verbal slurs and even violence. Throughout the narrative, the author explores her own psychological struggles, including her relationships with her parents, who are considered “illegal” in the nation where they have worked hard and tried to become model residents. In some of the most deeply revealing passages, Cornejo Villavicencio chronicles her struggles reconciling her desire to help undocumented children with the knowledge that she does not want "kids of my own." Ultimately, the author’s candor about herself removes worries about the credibility of her stories.
A welcome addition to the literature on immigration told by an author who understands the issue like few others.Pub Date: May 19, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-399-59268-3
Page Count: 208
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: Jan. 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
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