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WALLBANGIN'

GRAFFITI AND GANGS IN L.A.

paper 0-226-66772-3 An anthropologist from UCLA constructs a semiotics for decoding the graffiti markings of street gangs. Phillips expresses an interest in the general availability of graffiti as a sign system both historically and cross-culturally, but her main focus is on how gangs in L.A. deploy this form of writing to symbolically demarcate their geographical and political boundaries. Her impetus for the book was an incident in which one young Hispanic “tagger” was killed and another wounded by a white vigilante who was carrying an illegal handgun. Public response to the story seemed to indicate a high level of support for the shooter, thus indicating that the general fear of graffiti and its effects on neighborhoods warrants severe measures be taken against its practitioners. What the public fears to be a cryptic threat to its safety and quality of life, Phillips recognizes as a creative response to a situation of nearly intolerable disenfranchisement. More than this, Phillips employs her study of graffiti as a methodology for writing and thinking about gang life and issues without fixating on violent behaviors and stereotypes—as often occurs in academic work on street gangs. By photographing wall markings and then bringing the pictures with her as she seeks out individual artists for interviews, she builds a bond with informants who might otherwise have been very hesitant to speak about their work with an anthropological field-worker. She studies and compares the graffiti styles of African-American gangs, such as the Bloods and the Crips, and Chicano gangs, such as the Santa Monica Little Locos, and explores how the medium allows gangs to close themselves into bounded systems, cordon off territories, make their places within neighborhoods, define friends and enemies, and negotiate a host of political and cultural concerns. Perhaps the least hysterical exploration into the life of urban street gangs in the US to date. (13 color, 104 b&w photos, not seen)

Pub Date: June 1, 1999

ISBN: 0-226-66771-5

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Univ. of Chicago

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2000

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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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