A delectable smorgasbord of bite-size travel details and large truths that offer a taste of the global world to come. Iyer (Tropical Classical, 1997, etc.) is an Indian born in England who moved to California, then Japan. This rootless cosmopolitan cannot even pronounce the first name he was given. His English, however, is rich enough to describe a “whole planet joyriding in somebody else’s Porsche” and Japan’s “promiscuous consumption of all the cultures in the world.” Iyer’s globe hopping racks up cross-cultural observations as fast as frequent-flier miles, conveying along the way the myriad challenges and delights of “living out of a linguistic suitcase.” He finds Buddhist anti-materialism more realistic than the American pursuit of happiness, a preference dramatized when a firestorm destroys his California home. A burning house is a Buddhist symbol of freedom from possessions, and Iyer is a global soul, not a mere jet-setter who quotes Emerson. A social consciousness—he points out that Bill Gates is financially worth a hundred million other Americans—also elevates his travel notes above CondÇ Nast. A polyglot world-city like Toronto lives up to his ideal of “the city as anthology,” but the homeless Iyer finally finds family and home in suburban Japan. True, their world is a giant souvenir store, but he appreciates the unambiguous concern of the Japanese with faking innocence, and is most at home among the displaced. Travelers who do not number themselves among these “multi-cultural foundlings,” where national borders are blurred, are now an anachronism: “The man who never leaves home may feel that home is leaving him.” Yet Iyer compares travel’s constant wonder at the foreign to childhood, the defining anchor that global souls lack. His descriptions of the bounty and paranoia of airports alone make his musings an ideal carry-on. An eloquent eulogy for our late millennium’s old-world order of provincialism, and a passport to our borderless future.
Pub Date: Feb. 13, 2000
ISBN: 0-679-45433-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1999
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics,...
A provocative analysis of the parallels between Donald Trump’s ascent and the fall of other democracies.
Following the last presidential election, Levitsky (Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America, 2003, etc.) and Ziblatt (Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy, 2017, etc.), both professors of government at Harvard, wrote an op-ed column titled, “Is Donald Trump a Threat to Democracy?” The answer here is a resounding yes, though, as in that column, the authors underscore their belief that the crisis extends well beyond the power won by an outsider whom they consider a demagogue and a liar. “Donald Trump may have accelerated the process, but he didn’t cause it,” they write of the politics-as-warfare mentality. “The weakening of our democratic norms is rooted in extreme partisan polarization—one that extends beyond policy differences into an existential conflict over race and culture.” The authors fault the Republican establishment for failing to stand up to Trump, even if that meant electing his opponent, and they seem almost wistfully nostalgic for the days when power brokers in smoke-filled rooms kept candidacies restricted to a club whose members knew how to play by the rules. Those supporting the candidacy of Bernie Sanders might take as much issue with their prescriptions as Trump followers will. However, the comparisons they draw to how democratic populism paved the way toward tyranny in Peru, Venezuela, Chile, and elsewhere are chilling. Among the warning signs they highlight are the Republican Senate’s refusal to consider Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee as well as Trump’s demonization of political opponents, minorities, and the media. As disturbing as they find the dismantling of Democratic safeguards, Levitsky and Ziblatt suggest that “a broad opposition coalition would have important benefits,” though such a coalition would strike some as a move to the center, a return to politics as usual, and even a pragmatic betrayal of principles.
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics, rather than in the consensus it is not likely to build.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6293-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
