For centuries, Ireland was an impoverished backwater from which the educated fled. Even 30 years ago, writes the author, the...
In this solid debut, USA Todayglobal affairs reporter Lynch tells the story of a small nation that has changed profoundly in recent decades.
None For centuries, Ireland was an impoverished backwater from which the educated fled. Even 30 years ago, writes the author, the country still lacked jobs, roads and reliable phone service. By the late 1990s, all of that changed. Breaking out of its malaise, Ireland began attracting U.S. investment and such technology companies as Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard, becoming one of the world’s richest consumer societies. The “Celtic Tiger” growth miracle had the Irish flocking to large shopping malls and expensive restaurants, spending more than twice as much on personal goods and services in 2006 as they had in 1998. The housing market soared, and builders had to recruit foreign construction workers. “The long boom replaced the traditional Irish inferiority complex with a robust culture of entitlement,” writes Lynch. Vividly re-creating the heady era of excess, the author tells the stories of bankers, politicians and others who helped create the new, hip, more affluent Ireland. In 2007, the euphoria ended abruptly amid falling property prices and global recession. Much of the boom had been illusory, the result of over-borrowing by banks, irresponsible regulatory policies and corrupt dealings between politicians and business leaders. The author also covers the cultural flowering of these same boom years, in which Riverdanceand the work of U2, Roddy Doyle and other writers and performers won global attention. Doyle’s novels and plays exploring domestic violence and other seldom-acknowledged aspects of domestic life became part of a broad debate on national identity. At the same time, there was a sharp decline in the repressive influence of the Catholic Church. Lynch attributes the social and cultural ferment to the new self-confidence of the era. Now struggling to recover from an economic collapse marked by soaring unemployment and collapsed banks, Ireland can look forward to a “more modest future as a modern European country.”Pub Date: Nov. 9, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-230-10273-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Aug. 23, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2010
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
PERSPECTIVES
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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