A stellar account of a complex offshore world, as seen through the tangled history of a humble barge.
The weight of the world, carried by one lowly barge.
“Anything becomes interesting if you look at it long enough.” Gustave Flaubert’s astute observation applies well to Kumekawa’s fascinating study of what might be perceived as a banal subject not worthy of our attention: a hulking barge. In 2020 the Harvard historian learned that “a simple ninety-four-meter-long flat-bottomed hull” had been moored on New York’s East River in the 1990s. Upon it sat five stories of modified shipping containers—it served as a floating jail. Curious to know more, Kumekawa found that the vessel had a complicated history that reflected, as he writes, “the abstract forces that have transformed our world over the past forty years.” It was built as the Balder Scapa in Sweden in 1979. Owned by a Norwegian tycoon, its first mission was as a transport barge, towed to Scotland with the “madcap idea” of dredging up steel from World War I warships that Germans sank rather than turn over to the British. That venture fizzled, and the barge was repurposed as a “floatel” to house North Sea offshore oil drillers. The Falklands War got in the way of that plan. In need of housing for troops in the South Atlantic, Margaret Thatcher’s government leased the barge in 1983. “Luxurious they were not,” one pilot said of the accommodations. The vessel’s next stop: Germany, for factory workers building the VW Beetle. And then it was off to New York as a jail, followed by time in England serving the same purpose. In 2010 it was towed to Nigeria for offshore oil workers. Throughout his epic telling, Kumekawa weaves in lucid and eye-opening explanations of the murky worlds of tax havens and loose regulations. The barge is at the heart of it all. The vessel has “no motor, no keel, no rudder,” he writes, but his book has undeniable drive.
A stellar account of a complex offshore world, as seen through the tangled history of a humble barge.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593801475
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
PERSPECTIVES
A powerful reiteration of principles—and some fresh ideas—from the longest-serving independent in congressional history.
Another chapter in a long fight against inequality.
Building on his Fighting Oligarchy tour, which this year drew 280,000 people to rallies in red and blue states, Sanders amplifies his enduring campaign for economic fairness. The Vermont senator offers well-timed advice for combating corruption and issues a robust plea for national soul-searching. His argument rests on alarming data on the widening wealth gap’s impact on democracy. Bolstered by a 2010 Supreme Court decision that removed campaign finance limits, “100 billionaire families spent $2.6 billion” on 2024 elections. Sanders focuses on the Trump administration and congressional Republicans, describing their enactment of the “Big Beautiful Bill,” with its $1 trillion in tax breaks for the richest Americans and big social safety net cuts, as the “largest transfer of wealth” in living memory. But as is his custom, he spreads the blame, dinging Democrats for courting wealthy donors while ignoring the “needs and suffering” of the working class. “Trump filled the political vacuum that the Democrats created,” he writes, a resonant diagnosis. Urging readers not to surrender to despair, Sanders offers numerous legislative proposals. These would empower labor unions, cut the workweek to 32 hours, regulate campaign spending, reduce gerrymandering, and automatically register 18-year-olds to vote. Grassroots supporters can help by running for local office, volunteering with a campaign, and asking educators how to help support public schools. Meanwhile, Sanders asks us “to question the fundamental moral values that underlie” a system that enables “the top 1 percent” to “own more wealth than the bottom 93 percent.” Though his prose sometimes reads like a transcribed speech with built-in applause lines, Sanders’ ideas are specific, clear, and commonsensical. And because it echoes previous statements, his call for collective introspection lands as genuine.
A powerful reiteration of principles—and some fresh ideas—from the longest-serving independent in congressional history.Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2025
ISBN: 9798217089161
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2025
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
PERSPECTIVES
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