An evolutionary biologist’s view of family life serves as a cautionary demonstration of the limitations inherent in rigidly interpreting evidence according to a single scientific viewpoint. Biologist Baker (Sperm Wars, 1996) and freelance journalist Oram want to shed new light on couples’ disagreements regarding parenthood and on family conflict once children arrive. Instead, they inadvertently provide an excellent lesson on the intellectual danger of single-minded devotion to a solitary principle, in this case, the idea that all human behavior is the result of genes that are solely devoted to perpetuating the human race. For each of their topics, from pregnancy and labor through infant care and on to later family life, Baker and Oram begin with a fictional scenario. The florid prose is off-putting (“The man, still half-naked, his legs shrouded in mist, was running round and round . . . his shirt flattened over his shrunken penis and flapping against his bottom”), and in some cases (incest and abuse) the scenarios themselves are offensive. The authors look at how these fictional couples/families fit their thesis of striving for reproductive success, finding that sources of conflict abound. From men wanting to impregnate as many women as possible vs. women looking for a single strong protector/provider, to the —war— between the parents’ genes when the baby is in utero, the authors fit their cases too neatly to their thesis, describing those who fail to accept their evidence as emotionally unable to accept the fact that behavior has firm biological roots. Few readers will buy Baker and Oram’s analysis of the other end of life: a grandmother forced by tragic circumstances to raise her grandchildren will not only be fulfilling the biological task of helping her genes survive, they argue, but “will probably find her post-menopausal life more rewarding than that of the majority of her contemporaries.” For an unbiased, vastly better supported discussion of similar ground, see instead Bruce Bagemihl’s Biological Exuberance (1999). A narrow-minded argument, poorly presented.
Pub Date: April 22, 1999
ISBN: 0-88001-658-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
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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