A valiant attempt, with many fruitful insights, to help fashion citizens capable of sound independent judgments.
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A compendium of elegy, emotive description, and thorough research capturing past and present Jewish life in East-Central Europe. Freelance journalist Gruber (Rescue: The Exodus of Ethiopian Jews, 1987, etc.) walks us through what used to be the core of Jewish civilization in Europe. Today, fewer than 120,000 Jews live in Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia, a region once home to nearly 5,000,000 Jews. Between the fall of 1989 and the summer of 1993, Gruber visited the area in an attempt both to recreate the shattered past and to present a contemporary picture of the survivors' world. Her personal reflections often distract us from the subject, but her archival finds and the testimonies she has elicited from survivors and gentile neighbors offer a fascinating glimpse into largely unexplored areas of Jewish history. Gruber's cameralike eye is especially effective in surveying medieval bastions of Jewry like Prague, where she shows ornate synagogues—complete with domes, choir lofts, organs, and other objects that reflected the affluence and worldliness of Czech Jews. Unlike the poorer Jews of rural Poland and Hungary, many of these Prague Jews are shown to have abandoned basic Jewish customs and cultural knowledge. By the 20th century, their eagerness to assimilate with their non-Jewish neighbors had driven the intermarriage rate to unprecedented levels. Perhaps even more surprising is the evidence of a slow resurgence of Jewish identity in select Polish cities like Warsaw, Wroclaw, and Lodz. Since the collapse of communism in 1989, active Jewish study groups have formed, even though ``being a Jew or coming from a Jewish background can still be very uncomfortable for a Pole.'' A rich assemblage of Jewish history, but with the disconcerting organization of a patchwork quilt. (50 b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Sept. 2, 1994
ISBN: 0-471-59568-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Wiley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1994
Art historian Hollander tries to set the record straight about the ``tyranny'' of fashion and to clear its bad name, making a reasonably strong case but offering a surprisingly lifeless account in the process. Hollander (Moving Pictures, 1989, etc.) spends most of the book establishing modern masculine sartorial superiority, setting up the contrast between the men's suit, with its brilliant design- -serious, sexy, timeless—and what, until this century, was mere ephemeral female fashion frippery. From the 1600s until the early 1900s, women's dress became increasingly theatrical and decorative, and received more attention from society (i.e., men), while men's dress set the classical standard. Obscuring female form and motion with tiny waists and voluminous skirts, women's clothing earned fashion the reputation of being manipulative and deceptive. Hollander asserts, to the contrary, that fashion is an ``imaginative art.'' Only in the early 20th century, however, did women's fashion become realistic and dignified. The introduction of short skirts after WW I gave coherence to the female form (and made exposing legs, and thus the wearing of pants, possible). It is just recently, Hollander argues, that female dress has begun to set any significant standards for Western fashion: ``Women finally took over the total male scheme of dress, modified it to suit themselves, and have handed it back to men charged with immense new possiblities.'' Sex and Suits has several major weaknesses, however. Most frustrating, given the book's historical scope (from the Greeks to the Gap), is the profusion of generalizations (``In general, people have always worn what they wanted to wear; fashion exists to keep fulfilling that desire'') and occasional preposterous pronouncements resulting from her attempt to divorce shifts in fashion from social forces. Also, her take on the relationship between gender and contemporary fashion is dated. Still, despite its un-hip feel, a coherent defense of fashion's integrity. (45 b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Sept. 9, 1994
ISBN: 0-679-43096-2
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
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