A strident critique of the left.
A debut political book identifies the dangerous spread of progressive policies in the United States.
Leftist policies are ascendant in the Democratic Party. Liberals are promising voters free medical care, education, food, and housing while arguing that compassion demands that the United States allow millions of illegal immigrants to enter the country. In reality, Merlo asserts, the Democrats are just trying to import new voters to help them turn America into a socialist country—or, worse, a member state in some sort of socialist world government. The author explains the origins of the American left and how it has merged with the Democratic Party, playing upon the resentments of persecuted groups—women, racial minorities, LGBTQ, and the poor—to encourage violence, reopen wounds, and subvert the capitalist order. He then shows the adverse effects of the left’s social policies, some of which are based on questionable findings. He blames the current political state on the nation’s pernicious anti-intellectualism: “Unfortunately, America seems to have rejected aristocracy at the same time it renounced monarchy, and replaced it with antiintellectualism….Intellectually-gifted students are often mocked, and the pretty girls prefer Mr. Touchdown.” Interestingly, Merlo makes a number of arguments that would seem to paint him as an anti-intellectual, or at least someone ill-informed. He claims that Muslims should not be allowed to immigrate in large numbers to the United States because some Muslim men will be driven to assault and rape by the sight of scantily clad American women. He also contends that some of these same women are accusing flirtatious men of impropriety, costing them their careers. Merlo’s prose attempts to present itself as objective but it is filled with odd and sometimes controversial asides: “The resurgence of TB among homosexuals and drug-users (homosexuals are especially likely to use drugs while having sex) was predictable, but, ignored in the name of sympathy for Haitians.” The ambitious book is well-researched and the author includes numerous quotes from other sources. But he sometimes inserts them into the text without full explanations (“I think the alt-left folks are working toward now…chaos, anarchy, and regime overthrow…and we should be alert to their intentions”), referring the audience to a Bibliography. The work ends up reading more like a blog post rant than a polished work of nonfiction.
A strident critique of the left.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4897-1994-2
Page Count: 92
Publisher: LifeRichPublishing
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2019
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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