An enthusiastic, optimistic update on how immigrant Americans are changing the political landscape, promoting reform, and...
An astute appraisal of how the state of American democracy is being preserved by unexpected political newcomers.
New American Leaders founder Bhojwani, who served as the first commissioner of immigrant affairs in New York City, profiles an impressive selection of current and formerly elected immigrant officials who have made a difference in their districts. Though she admits that the present political climate is bleak, she shows that there is hope and promise to be found in a new wave of campaigns by “newly energized” first- and second-generation Americans groomed by her group to inspire inclusiveness in government. Through legislative term limits and district-based elections, these newcomers have a better opportunity to run for office. In accessible prose, Bhojwani presents a wide canvas of success stories, each one reflective of a predominantly marginalized minority group, and how they got elected. With built-in skepticism, each candidate acknowledged that by running for public office, they would be individually “sacrificing personal comfort for public service” and that this exposure would be heightened by underlying racism and their “perceived otherness” as immigrants. The author spotlights Raquel Castañeda-López, a vibrant Mexican-American dedicated to her councilwoman post for Detroit’s Latinx- and African-American–populated District 6; Ilhan Omar, a petite but fiercely committed Somali-American Muslim member of Minnesota’s state legislature; Harvard-educated Jose Moreno, who, despite excessive campaign contributions from a domineering Walt Disney Company, beat out an opposing incumbent to win a seat on Anaheim, California’s city council; and Sam Park, the first openly gay man elected to the Georgia General Assembly. In 2002, Bhojwani herself joined city government, armed with passion and uncertainty but also with a steely determination to directly address “the disconnect between who Americans are and who our leaders are, between how we see ourselves and how we are seen, between the power we have and the power we have a right to.”
An enthusiastic, optimistic update on how immigrant Americans are changing the political landscape, promoting reform, and providing an all-encompassing voice for our multiracial country.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-62097-414-8
Page Count: 192
Publisher: The New Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
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
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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