by Steve Fraser ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 20, 2018
Smart and sometimes snarky; a book to study up on before taking to the streets to protest things as they are.
An examination of the concept and reality of class in a putatively classless nation.
In Fraser’s (The Limousine Liberal: How an Incendiary Image United the Right and Fractured America, 2016, etc.) provocative and well-supported view, signs of economic and social class are everywhere. “The housoleums and helipads and private islands of the 1 percent are the insignia of both their superordination and our frustrated desire,” writes the author, while of course the wealthy get the legroom while the not so wealthy are crammed into cattle-car economy seats. Even so, writes Fraser, the country has long labored to deny the very existence of class differences; it is part of our official ideology. The author serves up lively examples, writing, for instance, of the “paleface precincts” of New York and the attendant false consciousness of their inhabitants, who seem to disbelieve in class because they harbor the certainty that one day it will be their turn to be rich. Fraser’s account of how class is embedded in the Constitution alone is worth the price of admission. Though occasionally burdened by postmodern notions, his observations on such matters as the role of suburbia in advancing the no-class-in-America thesis (the suburbanites not considering themselves wage slaves “even though they did indeed work for wages”) are solid. Fraser argues that there is a cost to the thought that class does not exist in America, or, in a variant, that the proletariat is the middle class. The assurance that any of us can become part of the “propertied mastery” advances dog-eat-dog implications that in turn mean that Americans are looking out for ourselves rather than working for the emancipation of everyone, so that “the American utopia is a house divided against itself.”
Smart and sometimes snarky; a book to study up on before taking to the streets to protest things as they are.Pub Date: March 20, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-300-22150-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
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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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