Next book

A GARDEN OF UNEARTHLY DELIGHT

BIOENGINEERING AND THE FUTURE OF FOOD

If the thought of a farm straight out of Woody Allen's Sleeper, overrun with mammoth chickens and gargantuan vegetables, scares you, then this book will fuel a thousand nightmares. Mather, food editor of the Detroit News, raises the specter of an industrial agriculture run amok, a system of food production governed by short-term economics and quick-fix technological solutions to profound problems. In this milieu, feed costs are cut by filling animals with growth hormones, some known or suspected to be dangerous to humans, and increased market demands are met by accelerating vegetable production with a Pandora's boxful of petrochemical fertilizers. Mather visits farms, markets, and laboratories in her tour of the new biotechnology, indicting along the way the likes of Upjohn, Monsanto, and Dow for their role in reducing food to an industrial commodity but reserving her harsher criticism for a society that demands that foods be quick to prepare and cheap to consume. Those demands, Mather argues, have led to a disconnectedness with the simplest element of life: putting food on the table. She writes that few of us have ever seen up close how our food is raised, humorously recalling that one of her readers asked whether the direction ``skin chicken breasts'' meant removing the plastic wrapper from the package. Mather offers reasonable solutions to our overdependence on technologically produced foods. She argues that New York State could grow a local broccoli crop rather than importing broccoli from California, saving money and fuel, creating local jobs, and getting fresh produce in the bargain. And she prescribes a regimen of home cooking with fresh produce that she calls ``the first key act in a life that supports [small] farmers struggling to stay on the land.'' Full of good sense and good reportage, Mather's book deserves wide attention. (author tour)

Pub Date: June 19, 1995

ISBN: 0-525-93864-8

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Dutton

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1995

Next book

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

Next book

THE NEW GEOGRAPHY OF JOBS

A welcome contribution from a newcomer who provides both a different view and balance in addressing one of the country's...

A fresh, provocative analysis of the debate on education and employment.

Up-and-coming economist Moretti (Economics/Univ. of California, Berkeley) takes issue with the “[w]idespread misconception…that the problem of inequality in the United States is all about the gap between the top one percent and the remaining 99 percent.” The most important aspect of inequality today, he writes, is the widening gap between the 45 million workers with college degrees and the 80 million without—a difference he claims affects every area of peoples' lives. The college-educated part of the population underpins the growth of America's economy of innovation in life sciences, information technology, media and other areas of globally leading research work. Moretti studies the relationship among geographic concentration, innovation and workplace education levels to identify the direct and indirect benefits. He shows that this clustering favors the promotion of self-feeding processes of growth, directly affecting wage levels, both in the innovative industries as well as the sectors that service them. Indirect benefits also accrue from knowledge and other spillovers, which accompany clustering in innovation hubs. Moretti presents research-based evidence supporting his view that the public and private economic benefits of education and research are such that increased federal subsidies would more than pay for themselves. The author fears the development of geographic segregation and Balkanization along education lines if these issues of long-term economic benefits are left inadequately addressed.

A welcome contribution from a newcomer who provides both a different view and balance in addressing one of the country's more profound problems.

Pub Date: May 5, 2012

ISBN: 978-0-547-75011-8

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Review Posted Online: April 3, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2012

Close Quickview