Certainly odd but also smart and interesting. For any student who wants to write a term paper on Star Wars, this book could...
An exploration of how Star Wars “illuminates childhood, the complicated relationship between good and evil, rebellions, political change, and constitutional law.”
Sunstein (Conspiracy Theories and Other Dangerous Ideas, 2014, etc.) is a Harvard law professor and has served as an adviser to President Barack Obama; he is also a Star Wars fanatic. The author offers close readings of the movies, script decisions, their novelizations, and the fan fiction inspired by them, and he inflates it all to mythmaking worthy of Joseph Campbell’s scrutiny. “In all of human history, there’s never been a phenomenon like Star Wars,” writes Sunstein. “Fueled by social media, the whole series has a cult-like following, except that the cult is so large that it transcends the term. It’s humanity, just about.” Even for those few who lie outside that “just about,” this analysis engages with its broader themes about fathers and sons, timeliness and timelessness, destiny and free will, tradition and rebellion, God(s) and mankind. Though the author shows some academic rigor he largely avoids scholarly jargon except for the occasional “Let’s try to unpack it.” Sunstein is plainly writing for those who are equally invested in Star Wars and who want to learn more about how the franchise came about, why no one envisioned the scope and scale of its success, why it spoke specifically to its times and has continued to resonate, and how it encompasses spiritual, political, and psychological dimensions. What began as something of a homage to Flash Gordon has become, in the author’s eyes, a text through which we can decode all the issues of the modern world. “Here are thirteen ways of looking at Star Wars,” he writes. “Most of them have plausible sources in the movies. A few of them are nuts but still smart—which makes them especially interesting.”
Certainly odd but also smart and interesting. For any student who wants to write a term paper on Star Wars, this book could serve as a rich resource.Pub Date: May 31, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-248422-2
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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