Provocative and useful as a gauge of what much of the outside world is saying about us. And it isn’t nice.
Cherish the American imperium while ye may, o Neocons, for its days and yours are numbered.
So, resonantly and assuredly, declares Bello (Sociology/Univ. of the Philippines), who courted controversy after 9/11 with an op-ed piece asserting that the attacks were motivated by a widely shared sense of injustice and moral outrage in the world. Revisiting that argument, Bello adds this note: Because US policy in the Middle East subordinates the needs of people to strategic and economic interests, and because US policy is bound so closely to Israel, “there will always be thousands of recruits for acts of terrorism.” And not just in the Middle East. Despite Bush administration rhetoric, Bello argues, Afghanistan is a failed state in the making; Iraq a fait accompli defeat that only needs time to unfold; Latin America has become radicalized against the US anew, thanks largely to the mishandling of Iraq; the Southern Hemisphere increasingly demands economic autonomy; East Asia is prepared to ditch the US and align itself with an emergent China; and, as “China injects a new diplomatic dynamic into East Asian affairs, the United States may no longer be able to maintain military bases in South Korea and Japan.” Moreover, China’s economy will grow as America’s will shrink, causing stagnation and recession, if not depression, while the rest of the world will see that resisting the US pays dividends of other kinds. And that’s all to the good, Bello argues; not only will there be an increase in the power of other people to decide their own fates, but America will be helped to regain its former glory as a democratic republic without global ambitions. That last is perhaps too fond a hope, but, Bello adds, “If the Romans were around today, they would say that this is no way to run an empire.”
Provocative and useful as a gauge of what much of the outside world is saying about us. And it isn’t nice.Pub Date: March 4, 2005
ISBN: 0-8050-7402-3
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Metropolitan/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2004
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
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
PERSPECTIVES
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
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