A particularly jumbled effort to preach to the conservative choir.
A muddled cry from the political right warns of a new brand of holy warriors dead set on “disuniting” our fair nation.
Some saw the 1960s as a time of free love, social action and hope. Norac (An Alarm Went Off When I Heard “G.D. America,” 2011)—a pseudonym for a husband-and-wife author team—writes that the ’60s gave rise to an “intellectual elite” which cultivated a “hatred for the United States.” Today, this same elite make up what Norac calls a new “jihad,” comprised not of Muslims but “social radicals.” Although Norac accuses them of sundry offenses—backing bad taxes, supporting socialism, promoting fiscal stimulus—the authors assert that their prime sin is twofold: First, they exaggerate American racism and foment hatred by preaching that “white people are evil”; second, and more pressingly, they use bad science to advance the theory that human-generated carbon emissions contribute to global warming. For Norac, global warming theory is patently, obviously false, and the authors cite a simple ninth-grade science experiment, involving a red pen and a few big bags of rice, in an effort to expose its flaws. This book will likely be red meat for a certain brand of American conservative; readers will hear many of the same ideas circulating on Fox News, and, indeed, Norac cites regular Fox contributors and alums such as John Stossel, Dennis Miller and Glenn Beck. Of course, some readers may repeat standard replies to Norac’s critiques: Although the successes of the civil rights movement helped weed out overt racism, prejudice lives on in many attitudes and policies; further, the work of a precocious high schooler notwithstanding, the vast majority of researchers agree that global warming is both real and partially the result of human emissions. Further, some may find it in bad taste to call modern-day civil rights leaders and climate scientists “jihadists.” However, the main problem with Norac’s project is its rough organization; the authors simply have too many beefs for one book, and this surfeit of ambition results in a messy volume that jumps, seemingly at random, from topic to topic.
A particularly jumbled effort to preach to the conservative choir.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2012
ISBN: 978-1480075771
Page Count: 358
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
PERSPECTIVES
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
SEEN & HEARD
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