A brief but refreshingly broad-minded take on global economics that is invigorated by the tension between capitalism and...
Levine, a medical doctor and Ph.D. who studies global trends in medicine and economics, explains how the destiny of capitalism means embracing what some mistakenly see as its mortal enemy: government regulation.
Capitalism and government need not be at odds, argues Levine. In stark contrast to proponents of laissez-faire economics, Levine contends the future of capitalism actually requires government intervention. He advocates “balanced capitalism”—a system in which a capitalistic economy is counterweighted with some socialistic legislation. “Such balancing leads to both the stability and prosperity of a society,” he writes. The role of government, in Levine’s view, should be that of an “arbiter” seeking equilibrium between the interests of business and labor. Balanced capitalism is the result of evolutionary process unfolding worldwide—and not just in democratic nations: At the moment, Levine says, it’s “working better for dictatorial China than for democratic America [mainly because] China is able to better regulate the balance between capital and labor.” In the most controversial of the book’s claims, Levine contends that China’s rise to the world’s second-largest economy offers lessons to the United States: “Government regulation is a part of [China’s] dictatorial regime, whereas over the last several decades America erroneously abandoned constant regulation of economics and embraced self-regulation.” The book’s straight-laced prose lacks vigor, but Levine skillfully articulates his views in basic terms, making his arguments graspable to those with just an undergraduate understanding of economics. Instead of supply-demand charts and statistical data, he relies on big-picture theories and historical perspective. The best chapters flow like well-polished précis, while the less substantive ones read more like CliffsNotes. In particular, students of economist Milton Friedman, the Nobel laureate, will find much to take issue with. Levine believes that embracing Friedman’s ideas of limited government involvement in free markets has resulted in dangerous levels of inequality and various other problems. Instead, Levine argues, America should return to the philosophy championed by Lewis Henry Morgan and John Maynard Keynes to restore widespread prosperity. Levine envisions a mutually accommodative approach, with Uncle Sam as a referee ensuring a level playing field for both Main Street and Wall Street.
A brief but refreshingly broad-minded take on global economics that is invigorated by the tension between capitalism and government.Pub Date: Feb. 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-0692017814
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Victor Levine
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.
A light-speed tour of (mostly) Western poetry, from the 4,000-year-old Gilgamesh to the work of Australian poet Les Murray, who died in 2019.
In the latest entry in the publisher’s Little Histories series, Carey, an emeritus professor at Oxford whose books include What Good Are the Arts? and The Unexpected Professor: An Oxford Life in Books, offers a quick definition of poetry—“relates to language as music relates to noise. It is language made special”—before diving in to poetry’s vast history. In most chapters, the author deals with only a few writers, but as the narrative progresses, he finds himself forced to deal with far more than a handful. In his chapter on 20th-century political poets, for example, he talks about 14 writers in seven pages. Carey displays a determination to inform us about who the best poets were—and what their best poems were. The word “greatest” appears continually; Chaucer was “the greatest medieval English poet,” and Langston Hughes was “the greatest male poet” of the Harlem Renaissance. For readers who need a refresher—or suggestions for the nightstand—Carey provides the best-known names and the most celebrated poems, including Paradise Lost (about which the author has written extensively), “Kubla Khan,” “Ozymandias,” “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads, which “changed the course of English poetry.” Carey explains some poetic technique (Hopkins’ “sprung rhythm”) and pauses occasionally to provide autobiographical tidbits—e.g., John Masefield, who wrote the famous “Sea Fever,” “hated the sea.” We learn, as well, about the sexuality of some poets (Auden was bisexual), and, especially later on, Carey discusses the demons that drove some of them, Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath among them. Refreshingly, he includes many women in the volume—all the way back to Sappho—and has especially kind words for Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop, who share a chapter.
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-23222-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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