A thoughtful, worthy argument for fair-housing reforms that are truly fair.
Provocative study of how institutional measures reinforce inequality of opportunity in housing and other aspects of daily life.
Across the U.S., writes attorney and activist Kahlenberg, “zoning laws prohibit the construction of multifamily units” that are economically accessible to low-income families. Many municipalities issue regulations on minimum lot sizes, again sorting out the cash-poor who might be able to afford small homes on small pieces of land. The effect, Kahlenberg argues, is that, while to all superficial appearances overt racial discrimination is declining, economic discrimination is rising—and economic discrimination, of course, disproportionately affects minorities, and it’s entirely legal. The result, one researcher concludes, is “incipient class apartheid.” What the author calls “snob zoning” is an obstacle to equal opportunity: It not only blocks those of lesser means from large parts of any given community, but also discourages the ability to purchase a home and build the intergenerational wealth that comes from equity. Kahlenberg notes that districts with the highest rates of postwar Black migration are those with the most stringent regulations, as with one San Jose–area suburb that for years has forbidden anything but single-family-home construction. While the author allows that “some zoning regulations are essential” and that reforming discriminatory zoning laws is not the only remedy, it would make a good start, especially in a time when home ownership has lost some of its previous political clout. As evidence, Kahlenberg cites Trump-era cuts in mortgage-interest deductions even as Trump warned that Biden’s policies, if elected, would “allow ‘low-income housing’ to ‘invade’ suburban neighborhoods.” Suburban voters didn’t bite, and the author holds out hope that they will be amenable to further zoning reforms that, as he notes, would have the effect of building more diverse communities, which would promote “a more cohesive, less polarized democracy.”
A thoughtful, worthy argument for fair-housing reforms that are truly fair.Pub Date: July 11, 2023
ISBN: 9781541701465
Page Count: 352
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A dauntless, moving account of a kidnapping and the horrors that followed.
Enduring the unthinkable.
This memoir—the first by an Israeli taken captive by Hamas on October 7, 2023—chronicles the 491 days the author was held in Gaza. Confined to tunnels beneath war-ravaged streets, Sharabi was beaten, humiliated, and underfed. When he was finally released in February, he learned that Hamas had murdered his wife and two daughters. In the face of scarcely imaginable loss, Sharabi has crafted a potent record of his will to survive. The author’s ordeal began when Hamas fighters dragged him from his home, in a kibbutz near Gaza. Alongside others, he was held for months at a time in filthy subterranean spaces. He catalogs sensory assaults with novelistic specificity. Iron shackles grip his ankles. Broken toilets produce an “unbearable stink,” and “tiny white worms” swarm his toothbrush. He gets one meal a day, his “belly caving inward.” Desperate for more food, he stages a fainting episode, using a shaving razor to “slice a deep gash into my eyebrow.” Captors share their sweets while celebrating an Iranian missile attack on Israel. He and other hostages sneak fleeting pleasures, finding and downing an orange soda before a guard can seize it. Several times, Sharabi—51 when he was kidnapped—gives bracing pep talks to younger compatriots. The captives learn to control what they can, trading family stories and “lift[ing] water bottles like dumbbells.” Remarkably, there’s some levity. He and fellow hostages nickname one Hamas guard “the Triangle” because he’s shaped like a SpongeBob SquarePants character. The book’s closing scenes, in which Sharabi tries to console other hostages’ families while learning the worst about his own, are heartbreaking. His captors “are still human beings,” writes Sharabi, bravely modeling the forbearance that our leaders often lack.
A dauntless, moving account of a kidnapping and the horrors that followed.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780063489790
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Harper Influence/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
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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