by Paul R. Pillar ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 15, 2016
Although academic and largely unspecific, the book offers much fodder for the running debate about America’s role in the...
Understanding the naïve, distorted prism through which the United States views the rest of the world.
In this scholarly book, Pillar (Center for Security Studies, Georgetown Univ.; Intelligence and U.S. Foreign Policy: Iraq, 9/11, and Misguided Reform, 2011, etc.) examines some of the national characteristics and proclivities that encourage Americans to see the world in overly optimistic, Manichaean terms and the dangerous impact thereof on foreign policy. With the “moat” of two vast oceans separating the American continent from the troubled, crowded European theater—and while enjoying the bounty of massive natural resources without enemies in proximity—Americans tend to project a benevolent view of the world and expect the rest of the world to comply. America’s “exceptionalism”—an ingrained sense that the nation is unlike any other, founded on enlightened principles, free of nasty imperial history, and therefore superior—sets it on a collision course with the rest of the world, which does not share its sense of entitlement. Part of what Pillar sees as America’s “uncorrected ignorance” was generated early on, before America became a global power, without the “close and continuous interaction or competition with other countries that would have challenged American ideology and American conventional wisdom.” The country’s long period of invulnerability from foreign threats impedes it from sharing in other countries’ real security fears, engendering insensitivity and bewilderment, while the sharp distinctions between good and bad—e.g., presidents calling the enemy the “evil empire” and “axis of evil”—harken back to a period of heightened religiosity. Pillar argues that this profound lack of self-awareness has had a detrimental effect on American foreign policy by working from the demonizing presumption that “the adversary is always up to no good” (e.g., Iran), exacerbating common perceptions about “foreigners.” Furthermore, partisan competition often compounds avoidable misunderstandings.
Although academic and largely unspecific, the book offers much fodder for the running debate about America’s role in the world.Pub Date: March 15, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-231-16590-7
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Columbia Univ.
Review Posted Online: Dec. 16, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
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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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by Abhijit V. Banerjee & Esther Duflo ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 12, 2019
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“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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