A powerful, evocative study of the legacies of the last half-century’s most violent wars.
A collection of essays, interviews, and photographs offers a portrait of warfare and the elusiveness of peace.
As a veteran photojournalist, Gary Knight spent nearly 20 years as a constant witness to warfare, covering the Middle East, civil wars in Yugoslavia and Kashmir, and conflicts throughout Africa, South Asia, and Latin America. In 2001, he co-founded the VII Foundation to document and explore today’s pressing human rights issues. In this book, the foundation delves into some of the major world conflicts since 1945 and discusses ways to achieve lasting peace. In his opening essay, Knight poignantly highlights the ironies of a world order that lauds peace but continues to bestow its highest honors on warriors. Featuring essays by and interviews of over a dozen journalists, photographers, diplomats, and refugees, the work investigates the nature of war and the successes and failures of peace settlements in six conflicts: Lebanon, Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Northern Ireland, and Colombia. With a particular sensitivity to gender, many chapters highlight not just the experiences of women, but also how the inclusion of women in postwar decision-making increases the likelihood of peace. For example, Rwanda, the site of one of the worst genocides in recent history, is now represented by the largest number of female parliamentarians in the world and provides a global model for reconciliation. And while the book boasts essays by dignitaries like Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair’s chief of staff, and Samantha Power, the former United States ambassador to the United Nations, its most effective pages are those without any text. Nearly every section features haunting yet deeply human photos of war and postwar life by various photographers. A “Then vs. Now” photo essay that compares Cambodia in the 1970s through the ’90s to the present day silently speaks volumes about the slow progress of peace even after five decades. But despite a short essay on Iraq and an occasional passing reference, there is a curious lack of coverage of the conflicts that have involved the U.S., either directly or through covert action. America’s role in promoting peace as well as fostering violence is largely deemphasized, as is the proliferation of Western arms.
A powerful, evocative study of the legacies of the last half-century’s most violent wars. (afterword, contributors, acknowledgements)Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-68463-085-1
Page Count: 412
Publisher: SparkPress
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Deliberately provocative, with much for left-inclined activists to ponder.
A wide-ranging critique of leftist politics as not being left enough.
Continuing his examination of progressive reform movements begun with The Cult of Smart, Marxist analyst deBoer takes on a left wing that, like all political movements, is subject to “the inertia of established systems.” The great moment for the left, he suggests, ought to have been the summer of 2020, when the murder of George Floyd and the accumulated crimes of Donald Trump should have led to more than a minor upheaval. In Minneapolis, he writes, first came the call from the city council to abolish the police, then make reforms, then cut the budget; the grace note was “an increase in funding to the very department it had recently set about to dissolve.” What happened? The author answers with the observation that it is largely those who can afford it who populate the ranks of the progressive movement, and they find other things to do after a while, even as those who stand to benefit most from progressive reform “lack the cultural capital and economic stability to have a presence in our national media and politics.” The resulting “elite capture” explains why the Democratic Party is so ineffectual in truly representing minority and working-class constituents. Dispirited, deBoer writes, “no great American revolution is coming in the early twenty-first century.” Accommodation to gradualism was once counted heresy among doctrinaire Marxists, but deBoer holds that it’s likely the only truly available path toward even small-scale gains. Meanwhile, he scourges nonprofits for diluting the tax base. It would be better, he argues, to tax those who can afford it rather than allowing deductible donations and “reducing the availability of public funds for public uses.” Usefully, the author also argues that identity politics centering on difference will never build a left movement, which instead must find common cause against conservatism and fascism.
Deliberately provocative, with much for left-inclined activists to ponder.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9781668016015
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
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