A penetrating spur to imagine an alternative political system of civil liberties in a now firmly repressive Saudi Arabia.
Another damning exposé on the authoritarian crown prince of a problematic state.
Al-Rasheed, a longtime Saudi expat scholar and professor living in London, makes an important addition to the literature on Mohammed bin Salman (often known as MBS), offering a surgical delineation of his repressive measures in the name of "reform"—while arguing that real reform is possible. The charming prince, who assumed the role of heir-designate in 2017, was seen as a modernizer and reformer, and he has both celebrated and hindered the aspirations of young Saudis. Before the murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, the Western press mostly celebrated MBS, allowing him a sliver of legitimacy as he simultaneously promoted his purge of opponents and seduced the public with more liberal entertainment policies. The author, who displays keen knowledge of her former home, looks deeply at some of the troubling and persistent currents plaguing MBS's Saudi Arabia: a new populist nationalism, which she believes "covers up" nefarious economic, social, and regional policies of the crown prince; persistent tribalism and celebration of tribal purity; and the consistent targeting of the Saudi feminist movement. The chapter entitled "Women and Rights" is an excellent examination of a contradictory element that is ever present in the prince's policy: the ostensible empowerment of women (allowing them to drive and be more visible) versus punishment for chafing against the paternalistic "guardianship system." Al-Rasheed is especially familiar with the Saudi diaspora and the increased activism since the murder of Khashoggi. All of these developments, she writes, "puncture the official narrative about Muhammad bin Salman’s modern new Saudi Arabia." However, the author notes that low oil prices, continued war in Yemen, the erosion of state services and salaries, and the ravages of the pandemic may prompt Saudis to challenge the policies of the prince. Read this one alongside Bradley Hope’s Blood and Oil and Ben Hubbard’s MBS.
A penetrating spur to imagine an alternative political system of civil liberties in a now firmly repressive Saudi Arabia.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-19-755814-0
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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