An intelligent mix of research and pop culture, Caulfield’s analysis of celebrity trends gets to the heart of America’s...
Caulfield (Health Law and Policy/Univ. of Alberta; The Cure for Everything: Untangling Twisted Messages about Health, Fitness, and Happiness, 2012) dispels the myths of celebrity-endorsed products and the cult of fame that they sell.
More than ever, we view celebrities as paragons of success and emulate celebrity lifestyles in increasingly extreme ways—e.g., Kim Kardashian–like butt implants. With such power and influence, it’s no surprise that celebrities take advantage of their status to endorse products that benefit their brands. The so-called authority of celebrities hawking wares is especially questionable when these products sell a “healthy” lifestyle or guarantee a more youthful complexion, for example. Caulfield sees these products as dangerous and shallow money-grabs rather than legitimate health plans. However, despite his willingness to burst the celebrity bubble, the author admits that he is not out to attack celebrities or celebrity. In fact, he admits his love of celebrity; as part of his excursion, he auditioned for American Idol to get into the minds of the fame-obsessed. Beginning with Gwyneth Paltrow’s famous Clean Cleanse, Caulfield systematically dismantles the notion that celebrity products have any scientific foundation to justify their claims, and he even counters that many of them actually have the opposite effect. Caulfield goes beyond simply calling out celebrities as modern-day snake oil salesmen. He delves deeper into the social phenomenon of fame itself, asking why celebrities have this power in the first place and why most people are willing to heed their advice even when they are not surprised to learn that celeb products boast phony claims. This disconnect, writes the author, is even more perplexing when he considers how rare fame is and how devastating it can be.
An intelligent mix of research and pop culture, Caulfield’s analysis of celebrity trends gets to the heart of America’s obsession with the fame monster.Pub Date: May 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8070-5748-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015
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
SEEN & HEARD
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.
Known for her often contentious perspectives, New York Times opinion writer Weiss battles societal Jewish intolerance through lucid prose and a linear playbook of remedies.
While she was vividly aware of anti-Semitism throughout her life, the reality of the problem hit home when an active shooter stormed a Pittsburgh synagogue where her family regularly met for morning services and where she became a bat mitzvah years earlier. The massacre that ensued there further spurred her outrage and passionate activism. She writes that European Jews face a three-pronged threat in contemporary society, where physical, moral, and political fears of mounting violence are putting their general safety in jeopardy. She believes that Americans live in an era when “the lunatic fringe has gone mainstream” and Jews have been forced to become “a people apart.” With palpable frustration, she adroitly assesses the origins of anti-Semitism and how its prevalence is increasing through more discreet portals such as internet self-radicalization. Furthermore, the erosion of civility and tolerance and the demonization of minorities continue via the “casual racism” of political figures like Donald Trump. Following densely political discourses on Zionism and radical Islam, the author offers a list of bullet-point solutions focused on using behavioral and personal action items—individual accountability, active involvement, building community, loving neighbors, etc.—to help stem the tide of anti-Semitism. Weiss sounds a clarion call to Jewish readers who share her growing angst as well as non-Jewish Americans who wish to arm themselves with the knowledge and intellectual tools to combat marginalization and defuse and disavow trends of dehumanizing behavior. “Call it out,” she writes. “Especially when it’s hard.” At the core of the text is the author’s concern for the health and safety of American citizens, and she encourages anyone “who loves freedom and seeks to protect it” to join with her in vigorous activism.
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-593-13605-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2019
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