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1999

VICTORY WITHOUT WAR

A pragmatic and prescriptive critique that details what the US can do over the next dozen years to ensure peace, prosperity, and related blessings in the 21st century. Glasnost notwithstanding, former President Nixon (who misses few chances to remind readers of his wide acquaintanceship among world leaders past and present) harbors few illusions about the adversarial nature of relations between the US and the USSR. Within this persistently parlous context, he offers Washington a comprehensive, activist agenda for dealing—and competing with the Kremlin. Its cardinal points include: strengthening NATO; encouraging Japan to play a larger role on the global stage; fostering mainland China's economic development; and "showing the way" to so-called Third World countries. America, the author warns, call flinch from its mortal rivalry and yield to the lure of nco-isolationism only at the risk of making the world unsafe for flee nations. Nixon also counsels distinguishing vital national interests from peripheral concerns and defining foreign-policy objectives so that appropriately measured responses may be made to crises. Without shying from big-stick persuasion, he advises future Chief Executives to speak softly, tempering inflammatory Cold War rhetoric (which makes allies fear US recklessness rather than doubt Soviet intentions) and foregoing crowd-pleasing sentiments like "eliminating nuclear weapons from the face of the earth" that confuse public debate or raise unrealistic hopes. At the same time, Nixon points out that a reduction in tensions between the superpowers need not lessen vigilance; indeed, he asserts, dÉtente must be coupled with deterrence at the conventional-forces as well as nuclear level. On the political front, Nixon argues that genuinely creative initiatives must originate in the White House, because the bureaucracies—Defense, State, et al.—invariably rely on "standard school solution [s]." In like vein, he charges that diplomats "have a pervasive tendency to negotiate with themselves on behalf of the Soviets," i.e., by rejecting hard-line options as unacceptable to the Russians before talks begin. In the event, Nixon cautions, the goal of bargaining on any issue—arms control or otherwise—is security, not a treaty. A geopolitical briefing that's as worldly-wise as it is provocative and instructive.

Pub Date: April 29, 1988

ISBN: 0671678345

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: May 22, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1988

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WHEN BREATH BECOMES AIR

A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...

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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

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GOOD ECONOMICS FOR HARD TIMES

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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