A tiresome and tendentious book that destroys its own credibility through hyperbole and careless composition.
Confidently predicting nuclear annihilation and the worldwide destruction of civilization as we know it, Tor/Forge executive editor Gleason (End of Days, 2011, etc.) accuses American political leaders from both parties of treason.
“Future scholars may well argue,” writes the author, “that the most significant datum in U.S. history was that—for the sake of personal avarice—our politicians…traded with America’s nuclear enemies and helped bankroll the nation’s financial ruin and its nuclear destruction.” The author has become something of a professional enthusiast of the apocalypse, with a show on the History Channel, a novel featuring the destruction of the world, and now a hastily written and poorly edited broadside against the political establishment. While Gleason does bring to light how the United States has promoted the spread of nuclear power in dozens of countries, his unfocused approach makes it difficult to take seriously. The author conflates low-enriched uranium and highly enriched uranium throughout, though the two substances are radically different, a basic confusion which belies his self-proclaimed expert knowledge of proliferation. He refers to nuclear power plants as “nuclear bomb-fuel refineries,” and his estimate of the annual production of nuclear waste is dubious at best. Information boxes and bullet points on nearly every page are often only tangentially related to the subject at hand: Gleason rehashes the Bush dynasty’s well-known connections to companies that benefitted from the Nazi regime and describes the economic crisis as “A Detonating Debt-Bubble of Apocalyptic Proportions.” Gleason’s analysis of nuclear strategy and game theory has the feel of a quickly written undergraduate term paper. He muses, “Why India would want the ability to nuke the United States is a very strange conundrum,” and asserts that “Pakistan is so fearful of India, one could imagine that country nuking China, then trying to blame India.”
A tiresome and tendentious book that destroys its own credibility through hyperbole and careless composition.Pub Date: April 8, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-7653-3812-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
A heartfelt if somewhat unsurprising view of old age by the former president. Carter (Living Faith, 1996, etc.) succinctly evaluates the evolution and current status of federal policies concerning the elderly (including a balanced appraisal of the difficulties facing the Social Security system). He also meditates, while drawing heavily on autobiographical anecdotes, on the possibilities for exploration and intellectual and spiritual growth in old age. There are few lightning bolts to dazzle in his prescriptions (cultivate family ties; pursue the restorative pleasures of hobbies and socially minded activities). Yet the warmth and frankness of Carter’s remarks prove disarming. Given its brevity, the work is more of a call to senior citizens to reconsider how best to live life than it is a guide to any of the details involved.
Pub Date: Oct. 26, 1998
ISBN: 0-345-42592-8
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1998
A clear and candid contribution to an essential conversation.
Straight talk to blacks and whites about the realities of racism.
In her feisty debut book, Oluo, essayist, blogger, and editor at large at the Establishment magazine, writes from the perspective of a black, queer, middle-class, college-educated woman living in a “white supremacist country.” The daughter of a white single mother, brought up in largely white Seattle, she sees race as “one of the most defining forces” in her life. Throughout the book, Oluo responds to questions that she has often been asked, and others that she wishes were asked, about racism “in our workplace, our government, our homes, and ourselves.” “Is it really about race?” she is asked by whites who insist that class is a greater source of oppression. “Is police brutality really about race?” “What is cultural appropriation?” and “What is the model minority myth?” Her sharp, no-nonsense answers include talking points for both blacks and whites. She explains, for example, “when somebody asks you to ‘check your privilege’ they are asking you to pause and consider how the advantages you’ve had in life are contributing to your opinions and actions, and how the lack of disadvantages in certain areas is keeping you from fully understanding the struggles others are facing.” She unpacks the complicated term “intersectionality”: the idea that social justice must consider “a myriad of identities—our gender, class, race, sexuality, and so much more—that inform our experiences in life.” She asks whites to realize that when people of color talk about systemic racism, “they are opening up all of that pain and fear and anger to you” and are asking that they be heard. After devoting most of the book to talking, Oluo finishes with a chapter on action and its urgency. Action includes pressing for reform in schools, unions, and local governments; boycotting businesses that exploit people of color; contributing money to social justice organizations; and, most of all, voting for candidates who make “diversity, inclusion and racial justice a priority.”
A clear and candid contribution to an essential conversation.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-58005-677-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Seal Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 8, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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