by Rosabeth Moss Kanter ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 11, 2015
A busy yet passionately motivating call for action.
Harvard Business School professor and prolific author Kanter (SuperCorp: How Vanguard Companies Create Innovation, Profits, Growth, and Social Good, 2009) examines the degrading conditions and increasing inefficiency of American transportation networks.
Following an exhaustive, 20-month survey of our nation’s stalled mobility provisions, the author’s results proved to expand beyond the widely known theory that America has “coasted on past successes, failed to fully confront mounting problems, lacked sufficient vision about future opportunities, and, in Congress, held essential funding hostage to partisan battles over taxes.” At this point, the United States is lagging behind other international hubs boasting fast-tracked advancements in rail engineering, solar power, automotive excellence, and aerospace innovation. Kanter admits that although her perspective is primarily rooted in the public interest, it’s also personal: on a local scale, transportation issues like bridge collapses, flight delays, and chronic rail and roadway gridlock affect most of the planet’s population to varying degrees. She draws reactions and creative solutions from an exhaustive array of engineers, business professionals, politicians, and innovators, all complemented by pages of often startling statistics and insightful interviews, many with women who have become distinguished leaders in the robotics, logistics, and public transportation fields. Kanter, whose previous books have addressed corporate competitiveness and digital culture, argues that the main issue hindering American innovation in public transit is a stifling combination of corporate underinvestment and a lack of “faith in government.” There is an urgent need to “allocate public money for public works at a national level” and to empower leadership at the grass-roots level. Her accessible solutions encompass sophisticated, futuristic tools and incremental changes toward increasing efficiency while boosting public enthusiasm and cooperation. Though some readers may find the sheer volume of ideas daunting, the author’s intent remains clear: to inspire and promote participation in the development of America’s mobility infrastructure and elevate it to the forefront of the global innovation marketplace.
A busy yet passionately motivating call for action.Pub Date: May 11, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-393-24680-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2015
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by Abhijit V. Banerjee & Esther Duflo ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 12, 2019
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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More About This Book
SEEN & HEARD
by Lulu Miller illustrated by Kate Samworth ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 14, 2020
A quirky wonder of a book.
A Peabody Award–winning NPR science reporter chronicles the life of a turn-of-the-century scientist and how her quest led to significant revelations about the meaning of order, chaos, and her own existence.
Miller began doing research on David Starr Jordan (1851-1931) to understand how he had managed to carry on after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroyed his work. A taxonomist who is credited with discovering “a full fifth of fish known to man in his day,” Jordan had amassed an unparalleled collection of ichthyological specimens. Gathering up all the fish he could save, Jordan sewed the nameplates that had been on the destroyed jars directly onto the fish. His perseverance intrigued the author, who also discusses the struggles she underwent after her affair with a woman ended a heterosexual relationship. Born into an upstate New York farm family, Jordan attended Cornell and then became an itinerant scholar and field researcher until he landed at Indiana University, where his first ichthyological collection was destroyed by lightning. In between this catastrophe and others involving family members’ deaths, he reconstructed his collection. Later, he was appointed as the founding president of Stanford, where he evolved into a Machiavellian figure who trampled on colleagues and sang the praises of eugenics. Miller concludes that Jordan displayed the characteristics of someone who relied on “positive illusions” to rebound from disaster and that his stand on eugenics came from a belief in “a divine hierarchy from bacteria to humans that point[ed]…toward better.” Considering recent research that negates biological hierarchies, the author then suggests that Jordan’s beloved taxonomic category—fish—does not exist. Part biography, part science report, and part meditation on how the chaos that caused Miller’s existential misery could also bring self-acceptance and a loving wife, this unique book is an ingenious celebration of diversity and the mysterious order that underlies all existence.
A quirky wonder of a book.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6027-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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