by Stephan Orth translated by Jamie McIntosh ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 7, 2019
Amazing reporting, generous pictures, and the author’s true sense of connection with the locals add up to a truly honest...
An intrepid German journalist recounts his 2016 adventures in the far-flung reaches of Russia.
Orth (Couchsurfing in Iran: Revealing a Hidden World, 2018, etc.), who served for nearly a decade as the travel editor at Der Spiegel, seems to crave learning about places other people would never dream of visiting—e.g., Mirny, Sakha Republic, in the far east of Russia, affectionately termed “the asshole of the world” due to its massive diamond-mine operation. The author is clearly unafraid of confronting “anti-aesthetics on a scale that makes you faint,” and he is determined to look deeper than the information provided by official Russian sources. In this quirky, subtly revealing work, Orth provides a useful snapshot of the character and tone of Vladimir Putin’s Russia. The author’s 9,500-kilometer journey began in Moscow, where his host was Genrich (from couchsurfing.com), a hypereducated polyglot with dozens of pages of initial interview queries who turned out to be an ideal conversationalist. Other hosts proved intelligent and keen, as well, such as when Orth visited the chess capital, Elista, in the autonomous Republic of Kalmykia; Astrakhan, on the Volga River; a farming community in Volgograd, in the southwest; or Sevastopol, the home port of the Black Sea Fleet, in the newly annexed Crimea. Orth also traveled to former Russian president Boris Yeltsin’s hometown of Yekaterinburg; there, the author reports that “in 1991, 71 percent of Russians considered themselves European…by 2008 the figure was only 21 percent.” From the Altai Republic in Siberia, where the author ventured for a week of crazy car travel with Nadya, to a retreat near Lake Baikal to the remote Olkhon island in Siberia, Orth manages to bring forth a side of Russian life rarely seen.
Amazing reporting, generous pictures, and the author’s true sense of connection with the locals add up to a truly honest view of Russia today.Pub Date: May 7, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-77164-367-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Greystone Books
Review Posted Online: March 11, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2019
Share your opinion of this book
More by Stephan Orth
BOOK REVIEW
by Stephan Orth ; translated by Jamie McIntosh
BOOK REVIEW
by Stephan Orth
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...
Awards & Accolades
Likes
18
Our Verdict
GET IT
Google Rating
Kirkus Reviews'
Best Books Of 2016
New York Times Bestseller
Pulitzer Prize Finalist
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
Share your opinion of this book
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
Share your opinion of this book
More About This Book
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.