Not an optimistic picture but perceptive and forcefully argued.
The acclaimed actor and playwright offers a brief, disturbing meditation on the “story of civilization.”
“I’m upset about what my species has turned out to be—the species that went mad and destroyed the planet,” writes Shawn (Essays, 2010, etc.) in this jeremiad about the state of humanity. Anyone who has seen the author’s plays knows that he is drawn to the dark side of existence, and the current political climate has darkened his mood further. After spending a night watching TV news in a hotel room, he wonders if the world will ever stop rewarding “people like Trump, whose frighteningly bloated, distended, almost-bursting egos and paranoid eyes scanning the horizon for enemies seem to thrill so many people.” That’s all the impetus needed for Shawn—who grew up privileged in a fancy New York apartment with rooms “full of ashtrays and bourbon” and with a father, New Yorker editor William Shawn, who believed that civilization was justified because it produced Beethoven—to expound upon the ills of modern society. He packs a lot into 80 pages, including discussions of the Islamic State, Yemen, Osama bin Laden, 9/11, Marxism, and the diminishment of morality. The world, writes the author, is divided into the lucky and the unlucky. The latter have a perpetual grievance against the former, which is why no one should be surprised when, say, followers of Islam rise up against Western powers or when British and European Muslims react against “the suffering of fellow Muslims in Gaza or Iraq or Syria or Afghanistan.” Shawn offers suggestions for a better civilization but with the caveat that he doubts such a world will ever come about. Though the narrative structure feels random at times, readers can’t deny the veracity of the author’s claims, and many will share his anger when he writes about “egomaniacs who are always ready to scoop up power for their own warped purposes.”
Not an optimistic picture but perceptive and forcefully argued.Pub Date: June 13, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-60846-812-6
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Haymarket Books
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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