A timely, clear, and undeniably worrying account.
A respected reporter looks behind the curtain at a corporate behemoth.
It can be a surprise to learn that Huawei is possibly the largest telecommunications company in the world, dominant in China and powerful elsewhere. Dou, a technology journalist with the Washington Post, tackles the daunting task of documenting its story, amassing a huge amount of material from official records and expert opinions. Ren Zhengfei, who founded Huawei in 1987, is a somewhat reclusive figure, although Dou is able to piece together a picture of him (providing a useful timeline of events as well as a cast of major characters). An engineer by training, his real strength has always been strategy, and he was quick to grasp the need for a reliable phone system in China. Ren was adept at navigating the shifting shoals of Chinese politics, and when the cellphone boom came, he was in good position to take advantage. There were continued allegations that Huawei was, in tandem with the government, building eavesdropping and malware bugs into its “pipeline” systems, both at home and abroad, which eventually led to the company’s being banned from the U.S. and other countries. Dou acknowledges that it is difficult to track the connections between Huawei and the government; it seems to be a matter of personal connections and agreed objectives. In fact, now that Ren has stepped back from an active role, it is difficult to establish where the real power within the company lies, although several members of Ren’s family hold crucial positions. Dou holds the lengthy and complex narrative together, untangling the webs of money and politics that underpin China’s tech giant.
A timely, clear, and undeniably worrying account.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9780593544631
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Portfolio
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2024
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.
An Egyptian Canadian journalist writes searchingly of this time of war.
“Rules, conventions, morals, reality itself: all exist so long as their existence is convenient to the preservation of power.” So writes El Akkad, who goes on to state that one of the demands of modern power is that those subject to it must imagine that some group of people somewhere are not fully human. El Akkad’s pointed example is Gaza, the current destruction of which, he writes, is causing millions of people around the world to examine the supposedly rules-governed, democratic West and declare, “I want nothing to do with this.” El Akkad, author of the novel American War (2017), discerns hypocrisy and racism in the West’s defense of Ukraine and what he views as indifference toward the Palestinian people. No stranger to war zones himself—El Akkad was a correspondent in Afghanistan and Iraq—he writes with grim matter-of-factness about murdered children, famine, and the deliberate targeting of civilians. With no love for Zionism lost, he offers an equally harsh critique of Hamas, yet another one of the “entities obsessed with violence as an ethos, brutal in their treatment of minority groups who in their view should not exist, and self-decreed to be the true protectors of an entire religion.” Taking a global view, El Akkad, who lives in the U.S., finds almost every government and society wanting, and not least those, he says, that turn away and pretend not to know, behavior that we’ve seen before and that, in the spirit of his title, will one day be explained away until, in the end, it comes down to “a quiet unheard reckoning in the winter of life between the one who said nothing, did nothing, and their own soul.”
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593804148
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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