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STRANGERS AMONG US

HOW LATINO IMMIGRATION IS TRANSFORMING AMERICA

An effective study of the fastest growing minority population in the US, Latinos; the narrative seamlessly weaves together reportage, biography, and policy analysis. As a term, “Latinos” (or “Hispanics”) hides more than it reveals, for it includes groups as diverse as Puerto Ricans and Dominicans in New York, Chicanos in L.A., and Guatemalan Mayans in Houston. Eschewing vapid conclusions from aggregate data to tell of these groups, Suro shows that each Latino immigrant group is a separate story and that many biographies make up each story. Still, Latino immigration as a whole, both legal and illegal, has greatly accelerated over the past decade or so, and immigrants have arrived in the US at a time when a changing economy and an unsympathetic social mood (not unconnected phenomena) make their futures in the US tenuous at best. They arrive to find low paying service jobs whose real wages continue to fall, but little room for advancement for themselves or, more importantly, for their children, who desire a middle-class life but lack the skills needed to gain it. At the same time, they become the repository of the majority population’s fear of change and difference, and of the majority’s own precarious position in a dynamic economy. Ill-considered and punitive immigration “reforms” (such as California’s Proposition 187 or the federal immigration law of 1996) exacerbate the economic and social problems of the newly arrived while doing nothing to stem the tide of illegal immigration. A vicious circle ensues in which all lose. The author, a staff writer for the Washington Post and himself a second-generation Latino, argues forcefully and persuasively, in passionate detail, for rational and effective immigration controls, but also for social programs—especially education—that will equip immigrants and their children with the tools necessary for survival in a treacherous economy. Everyone will find something here to disagree with, but this is a book of immediate importance and lasting significance.

Pub Date: April 10, 1998

ISBN: 0-679-42092-4

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1998

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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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