Scattershot but often insightful, disquieting reading for policymakers.
Former NPR reporter and current Carnegie Foundation associate Chayes (The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban, 2006) offers an alarming account of the role played by acute government corruption in fostering violent extremism.
The systemic corruption in Afghanistan will hardly surprise informed readers, but its extent and enormous adverse impact on American efforts there (and in other failed states) are “remarkably underappreciated.” In her 10 years as a reporter and entrepreneur in Afghanistan, the author found that the government existed only to enrich the ruling elite. Within the carefully structured kleptocracy, money flowed upward via gifts, kickbacks and the purchase of positions. In return, those making payments were granted protection or permission to extract resources. Drawing on her intimate knowledge of Afghan life, Chayes argues convincingly that resentment over flagrant corruption drove many citizens to turn against the government and join the insurgency. At the same time, while pursuing flailing efforts to stem corruption (Chayes was an adviser on the issue), the U.S. passed millions of dollars to President Hamid Karzai (through the CIA), thereby enabling Afghanistan’s kleptocracy. The author meanders considerably between her insightful observations as a reporter, as an NGO leader dedicated to rebuilding Afghanistan and as a participant in fruitless U.S. efforts to halt government corruption. Chayes weaves in many relevant quotations from Machiavelli, Erasmus and other Renaissance “mirror writers” who advised rulers to listen to their subjects and avoid acute public corruption that could destabilize the realm. She also shows how loss of confidence in corrupt rulers prompted the Arab Spring and revolts elsewhere. Much of her material is telling, but many readers will be annoyed by Chayes’ tendency to jump around between countries and between events of the past and present. The author suggests remedies for dealing with acute corruption, noting that the political courage to act is often lacking.
Scattershot but often insightful, disquieting reading for policymakers.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2015
ISBN: 978-0393239461
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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