bookshelf

THE WORLD

Name: THE WORLD
Author: Richard Haass
ISBN: 978-0-399-56239-6

A BRIEF INTRODUCTION

by Richard Haass ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 12, 2020

A valiant attempt, with many fruitful insights, to help fashion citizens capable of sound independent judgments.

bookshelf

The president of the Council on Foreign Relations presents “the basics of what you need to know about the world, to make you more globally literate.”

In a follow-up to A World in Disarray (2017), Haass, a former diplomat and adviser for both George H.W. Bush and Colin Powell, examines “the ideas, issues, and institutions essential for a basic understanding of the world.” Though he focuses primarily on the era beginning with the Thirty Years’ War, the author references ancient history when it sheds light on contemporary circumstances. Haass takes a rather middle-of-the-road approach, trying to describe the mechanics of political science and global affairs in a way that provides context and perspective in writing that moves at a lively clip, both compact and inviting. Although he covers all the regions of the world, the lion’s share of the attention goes to, in descending order, Europe, North America, Asia, and everywhere else. The author explores the way things work, or don’t, in the political sphere: How do various state actors contend with terrorism? Did nuclear proliferation ever serve a positive role? Will cybercrime turn the internet on its head? Where are global health and trade headed? Will alliances and coalitions ever be enough to ensure global order? How do we best navigate the increasing effects of climate change? Throughout, Haass tries to track certain historical trajectories, with mixed success. During a discussion of the post–Cold War era, he writes, “no one would have the ability—and few would have the desire—to challenge the primacy of the United States given its tradition, with some exceptions, of not seeking to impose its will on others.” A strong case can be made for the primacy of “exceptions.” In covering so much territory in so little space, Haass can’t help but do a lot of skimming, though the lacunae are beguiling enough to make readers seek out deeper investigations into certain topics—and the author’s “Where To Go For More” section is a good start.

A valiant attempt, with many fruitful insights, to help fashion citizens capable of sound independent judgments.

Pub Date: May 12, 2020

ISBN: 978-0-399-56239-6

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Penguin Press

Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020

Categories:

- BOOK REVIEW
THE BILL OF OBLIGATIONS
by Richard Haass

- BOOK REVIEW
A WORLD IN DISARRAY
by Richard Haass

bookshelf

DEAD RINGER

AN INSIDER'S ACCOUNT OF THE MOB'S COLOMBIAN CONNECTION

by Bill Gately & Yvette Fernandez ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 20, 1994

bookshelf

US Customs special agent Gately (aided by freelancer Fernandez) describes a sting operation that brought down two Mafia operatives and transformed them into useful turncoats for the federal Protected Witness Program. Leo Fraley and Joe Cuffaro were not hardened mob insiders but victims of their environment. Fraley was the son of an honest teamster truck driver who drifted into the fringes of the mob while stoning ``scabs'' at steel mills during strikes and beating them for cash. He was eventually taken in by Dominic ``Mad Bomb'' Denobis, one of the original members of Murder, Inc., who made Fraley a liaison between the American mob and the Medellin concern in Colombia. The book's first chapter shows him being canoed through the rain forest in the magisterial company of an English- accented drug lord named Velasco en route to a cocaine rendezvous; the surreal trip is made amusing by the wary discomfort of the tough Yankee urban mobster forced by ``business'' into an exotic environment, and the picture of a jungle drug factory is fascinating. Cuffaro's is a different story. He came to the US at the age of 17 after his father, a marble wholesaler from Palermo, was bombed out of business by the Mafia. In a bitterly ironic twist, the Gambino family in New York made the wholesaler proprietor of one of their groceries and trained Joe as a master meat-cutter at one of their dubious meat market ventures in Bedford-Stuyvesant. Perhaps Cuffaro retained some bitterness over this humiliation of his father. In any case, after the successful sting and the incarceration of Cuffaro and Fraley, both men seemed to take a perverse delight in mocking their fellow mobsters locked up with them. An entertaining and well-researched book, carefully put together and structured. Its evocation of working-class ``wiseguy'' life is unfailingly and depressingly authentic.

Pub Date: Sept. 20, 1994

ISBN: 1-55611-396-X

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Donald Fine

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1994

Categories:

GENERAL CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES

bookshelf

PITIED BUT NOT ENTITLED

SINGLE MOTHERS AND THE HISTORY OF WELFARE

by Linda Gordon ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 14, 1994

bookshelf

A scholarly but resonant analysis of ``the cultural meanings of the welfare system,'' probing the mistaken assumptions behind fundamental policies forged during the 1930s. Beginning in 1890, writes Gordon (History/Univ. of Wisconsin), single mothers were portrayed as a symptom and cause of social decay; unlike today, however, the situation was seen as a temporary misfortune that usually befell white immigrants, often widows. Middle-class women's groups helped to create ``mother's aid'' for the deserving poor; the author calls this policy (a forerunner of the current Aid to Families with Dependent Children, or AFDC, program) ``maternalist,'' rooted in the subordination of women in domestic roles. But there were other points of view: Black women activists, notes Gordon (Woman's Body, Woman's Right, 1976), had less distance from those they wished to aid; they emphasized universal education and health programs rather than charity. The thinkers behind Social Security, all white and nearly all male, focused their lens on money and jobs for men, even though they knew it was a fallacy to consider men the sole supporters and protectors of women. During the New Deal, social movements ``valorized'' the elderly and unemployed, ignoring single mothers; the women's movement was quiet, and the lack of African-American political power meant that blacks' views on welfare were ignored. Gordon argues that the Social Security Act of 1935 created generous programs for the elderly and unemployed that operated under a single, federal standard; she cites a range of factors, including accommodations for southern employers and bureaucratic infighting, leading to the stratified, state-administered Aid to Dependent Children (later AFDC). Gordon doesn't enter the current policy debate, but she does note trenchantly that in order to fight inequality we must make such entitlements as corporate tax breaks and home mortgage deductions as ``visible as welfare.'' The arguments get complicated, but this is challenging history—and a goad to clarify modern-day rhetoric.