Not a defense of Trumpian politics but a measured explanation of why the American populace was so receptive to both Donald...
A scholar pits nationalism against globalism and finds the former preferable.
Where so many political analysts have seen the rise of Donald Trump and the Brexit decision as irrational offenses against the democratic process, former Knesset member Tamir (President/Shenkar Coll. of Engineering and Design; Liberal Nationalism, 1995, etc.) maintains otherwise. “The crystallization of the vulnerable into an identity group went unnoticed until the liberal progressive camp started losing one election after another,” she writes. “This wasn’t, as many assumed, a moment of democratic crisis but of democratic victory…because certain social trends that had previously been silenced suddenly got a voice.” The author laments the impression that too often that voice has been extremist and xenophobic, but she believes that those ill-served by liberal multiculturalism and the factionalism of identity politics have made a rational choice in their own best interests rather than been swayed by demagoguery. She convincingly argues that globalism benefits the rich, who already have wealth and power and resources, while undermining the many. So, why nationalism? Because it provides a cultural identity, makes one a part of something bigger than oneself, and confers a kind of immortality in the form of continuity. Because it provides a unifying narrative as well as a system of public education that reinforces the shared values of the unifying narrative. Addressing the times when academic institutions sought to “remake the national narrative,” the author writes, “national unity was eroded and pluralism replaced the ‘melting pot’ policy.” She continues, “the newly established harmony turned into cacophony.” Tamir castigates extremists on both the left and right, arguing that compromises reflecting the majority voice, without demonizing minorities, is the only path forward. She believes that political discourse must “move beyond the patronizing ways in which the masses are perceived.” Yet she makes it possible to appreciate her comparatively calm call to reason without becoming persuaded that the resurgence of nationalism is where reason lies.
Not a defense of Trumpian politics but a measured explanation of why the American populace was so receptive to both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-691-19010-5
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Princeton Univ.
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
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
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
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