Informative and often entertaining—good reading for anyone looking into the crystal ball for a glimpse of the world a...
Travels in the China of the aspiring, wanting young.
By Mandarin-fluent communications consultant Dychtwald’s reckoning, there are about 400 million millennials in China—more, that is, than the entire population of the United States, and though Chinese reckon generations by decades, those born between 1984 and 2002 (the U.S. definition of “millennial”) constitute a vast and world-changing cohort, “part of the world’s middle class, the first generations less preoccupied with needs and more involved with wants.” The author ventures insightful comments about his time in China, likening his explorations to the rock walls of the Grand Canyon, each layer telling its own story, from the differences between Chinese and American cultures to the differences between the idealized Chinese life of Buddhism and Confucianism and the actual Chinese life of consumer capitalism. Dychtwald chronicles the pent-up demand for things that fuels a subeconomy of faked Western brands, and he observes the rise in obesity among young Chinese to levels higher than Japan or South Korea. Much of this he links, in a nice logical exercise, to the consequences of the one-child policy (now abandoned) and the resultant surfeit of grandparents as compared to grandchildren. “A grandparent-led childhood,” he writes, “is part of why excess, and greater wealth, is so central to the experience of China’s only children.” The narrative is full of incomplete stories—incomplete because they’re not yet resolved, such as whether gay people will be accepted in the rising China—and unintended consequences: China’s anti-corruption campaigns, for example, mean that government work is not financially desirable, driving young people into entrepreneurship. Dychtwald is sometimes gee-whizzy and given to stating the obvious (“because of their remoteness, these places are prettier and more serene than the industrializing areas of China and are relatively untouched”), but his book is readable and engaging all the same.
Informative and often entertaining—good reading for anyone looking into the crystal ball for a glimpse of the world a quarter-century from now.Pub Date: Feb. 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-250-07881-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 9, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2018
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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