by John J. Miller ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 1998
A predictable polemic against the multiculturalist threat to assimilation, or what the author, vice president of the Center for Equal Opportunity (and formerly a fellow with the Heritage Foundation), calls “Americanization.” America is a land of immigrants. As a nation, says Miller, it has not only survived but prospered by following two simple rules: Citizens must agree that immigrants can and should become Americans; immigrants must agree to do so. Throughout an imperfect history, “Americanization” has been our guiding principle. Immigrants must accept our founding ideas of liberty and equality; they must be law-abiding, lead productive lives, speak English, become citizens. Today, however, says Miller, this principle is under attack, on the Right by “nativists” who believe immigrants cannot become truly American, on the Left by multiculturalist elites who believe they should not. As the author aims most of his criticism at the Left, this is clearly what he considers to be the greater danger. Well intentioned or not, Leftist elites have created policies and programs that have left millions of immigrants outside the American mainstream. We now have a demand for racial and ethnic entitlements (“the venomous cult of group rights”), bilingual education, foreign-language voting, and the cheapening of naturalization standards. The author calls for an end to all such policies and a return to the beliefs and practices of assimilation. Some of Miller’s thoughts are not without merit, but they—re presented in a shrill and intolerant tone, and his logic is often simply bizarre. While claiming not to be defending McCarthyism, for example, he finds it was a “triumph” for Americanization/assimilation as people were attacked for their beliefs, which they could change, not for their race, ethnicity, religion, or place of birth, which was given. Multiculturalism and connected issues are indeed contentious items on the American agenda. Discussion of them requires reasoned analysis and sensitive argumentation, neither of which is to be found in this decidedly odd manifesto.
Pub Date: May 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-684-83622-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1998
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by Paul Kalanithi ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 19, 2016
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
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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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by Abhijit V. Banerjee & Esther Duflo ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 12, 2019
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
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