An important cautionary book that is also oddly exhilarating. At a time when Americans are bombarded with nativism, it’s...
A veteran journalist’s chronicle of the 2014-2015 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, which struck more than 28,000 people and killed 11,310.
Wilson, a national correspondent at the Hill, notes that the Ebola virus was discovered in 1976 in Zaire. Though it caused sporadic and frighteningly lethal outbreaks, it did not sound global alarms except to experts who saw the potential should the virus strike densely populated areas. This is what happened in Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia. Since officials in these countries had not encountered the virus before, there were many initial misdiagnoses. Furthermore, these countries have poor health care systems, few providers or ambulances, and all but impassable roads. Now add in the cultural practice of washing the dead before burial, and it’s no wonder that infections spiked. It did not help that the World Health Organization also delayed action. Thankfully, Doctors without Borders, Samaritan’s Purse, and a few other groups were there, and they would be joined by other international but largely American agencies. The author’s stories of the first victims make for grim reading, but the narrative picks up with U.S. funding for resources and the deployment of thousands of CDC providers working in clinics and Army soldiers building treatment units. Several NGOs also worked with local leaders to organize burial teams, proving that education and building trust can overcome fear. Back in the U.S., Barack Obama faced congressional pressure to ban West African flights and physically quarantine returnees. His critical move was to appoint an “Ebola czar,” who coordinated efforts and staved off counterproductive measures. Wilson concludes with some hope for Ebola treatments but also reports of infection aftereffects and the massive damage to West Africa’s economy. More importantly, he points out how the world remains woefully unprepared for the next unavoidable epidemic.
An important cautionary book that is also oddly exhilarating. At a time when Americans are bombarded with nativism, it’s refreshing to read about American volunteers who came through in a crisis affecting some of the poorest nations in the world.Pub Date: March 27, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-8157-3135-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 4, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2018
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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