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BOYOPOLIS

ESSAYS FROM GAY EASTERN EUROPE

Rambling and self-indulgent, this collection is an awkward hybrid—part philosophical treatise on desire and political change (though regrettably short on the connections between the two), part travelogue, part sexual adventurer's memoir. Boyopolis's subtitle is misleading; there is very little about ``gay Eastern Europe'' here. Persky himself (a columnist for Canada's Globe and Mail) is gay, and there is plenty about his own desires—he finds beautiful young boys, often hustlers, wherever he goes. But apart from affairs and visits to gay bars in Berlin, Budapest, and Vilnius, Lithuania, and an interview with a gay Polish rock singer, the author has disappointingly little contact with gay people and communities. He's put off by the slightest obstacle; finding that there are no gay bars in Zagreb, for instance, he gives up, content to believe that their very absence tells him something. His self-absorption makes his social interactions embarrassing—though entertaining—to read about and allows him to exaggerate the value of his own observations. Such meditations are part of the great pleasure of traveling alone, but Persky's perorations on philosophy, the end of communism, eroticism, etc., are quite thin. Perhaps most disappointing, though Persky interviews political reformers wherever he goes, his essays yield little insight into the impact of the end of Communism on gay people in Eastern Europe; the homosexuality in this book (which is mostly Persky's own) is oddly dislocated from its other thread- -which is the grandiose project of understanding the broader geopolitical changes of the late 20th century. The exciting potential of this project goes largely unrealized; one hopes someone will pick up from where Persky left off and actually find out something about gay lives in one of the world's fastest-changing, most fascinating regions.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1996

ISBN: 0-87951-690-9

Page Count: 432

Publisher: Overlook

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1996

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WHEN BREATH BECOMES AIR

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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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

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