by Shane Harris ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 22, 2010
A sharply written, wise analysis of the complex mashup of electronic sleuthing, law, policy and culture.
National Journal Intelligence and Homeland Security correspondent Harris investigates how the American government has acquired unprecedented surveillance power.
When the details of the Total Information Awareness system that John Poindexter was building for the Pentagon became public in 2002, civil-liberties advocates indignantly objected to what they saw as a vast, creepy surveillance program that spied on Americans, notwithstanding any protection it provided against terrorist attack. The fallout forced Poindexter to leave government for the second time—the first followed his involvement in the Iran Contra Scandal—but his dream of an electronic surveillance system that could detect security threats, digest information and convert it into a useful picture to preempt terrorism survived, albeit without the attendant privacy protections Poindexter had envisioned. Those safeguards were rejected ultimately as too costly and technologically demanding by the “watchers” who inherited the program and later enshrined many of its practices in law. Their names and deeds loom large in Harris’s story about the emergence of the surveillance state, but the author rightly centers on Poindexter, whose high-level, hands-on experience with terrorism dates back to the ’80s attack on the Beirut Marine barracks and the Achille Lauro hijacking. Despite his past, the government desperately needed his expertise in the wake of 9/11. Whether discussing the relationships among various intelligence agencies, the political component of any strategy, the trade-offs between security and privacy, or recounting the riveting story of the Army’s aborted Able Danger program, Harris displays an exquisite understanding of the intricacies of his topic and a remarkable sensitivity to the genuine concerns of the watchers and their critics. Although he’s skeptical about whether pattern analysis of data really catches terrorists, the author acknowledges the new administration’s disinclination to dismantle what’s been assembled and their fear of the endless recriminations that would follow another attack on the order of 9/11.
A sharply written, wise analysis of the complex mashup of electronic sleuthing, law, policy and culture.Pub Date: Feb. 22, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-59420-245-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
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by Shane Harris
by Paul Kalanithi ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 19, 2016
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
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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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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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