A collection of insightful geopolitical analyses that offers little new for Chomsky devotees.
Two prominent intellectuals rehash familiar discussions about the myriad failures of American foreign policy.
In the foreword to this back-and-forth between Chomsky and Prashad, Angela Y. Davis calls Chomsky “the conscience of a country,” an unbending critic of the flawed concept of American exceptionalism. In addition to examining America’s disastrous, 20-year war in Afghanistan and the recent hasty withdrawal, the authors journey back to the Vietnam era, showing how the U.S. “has failed to accomplish any of the objectives of its wars.” American bombing, they clearly demonstrate, has created only needless suffering, and they are perplexed that government officials wonder why there is often hatred and violence directed toward the U.S. Due to its relentless military bullying, the authors characterize America as a kind of godfather. “There is a mafia quality to the way the United States has exercised its power,” they write in the introduction, “something that goes back to the days of the genocide against the indigenous peoples of North America….The idea that the United States…had a right to define the destiny of the Americas and to export this attitude to other lands, especially in parts of Africa and Asia, derives from its settler-colonial history.” Using a mixture of dialogue and insertions of Chomsky’s previous public pronouncements, the collaborators circle back continuously to the myth of American exceptionalism and how American attempts to govern with intimidation and military aggression have failed many times over. In a concluding section that feels tacked-on, the authors turn to the war in Ukraine, which they agree is a disaster for the planet: “The most significant effect of this war, barely discussed, is that it sets back—maybe permanently—the meager hopes for escaping the total catastrophe of climate destruction, the end of organized human life (and innumerable other species we are wantonly destroying).”
A collection of insightful geopolitical analyses that offers little new for Chomsky devotees.Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-62097-760-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: The New Press
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.
A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting.
To call Elon Musk (b. 1971) “mercurial” is to undervalue the term; to call him a genius is incorrect. Instead, Musk has a gift for leveraging the genius of others in order to make things work. When they don’t, writes eminent biographer Isaacson, it’s because the notoriously headstrong Musk is so sure of himself that he charges ahead against the advice of others: “He does not like to share power.” In this sharp-edged biography, the author likens Musk to an earlier biographical subject, Steve Jobs. Given Musk’s recent political turn, born of the me-first libertarianism of the very rich, however, Henry Ford also comes to mind. What emerges clearly is that Musk, who may or may not have Asperger’s syndrome (“Empathy did not come naturally”), has nurtured several obsessions for years, apart from a passion for the letter X as both a brand and personal name. He firmly believes that “all requirements should be treated as recommendations”; that it is his destiny to make humankind a multi-planetary civilization through innovations in space travel; that government is generally an impediment and that “the thought police are gaining power”; and that “a maniacal sense of urgency” should guide his businesses. That need for speed has led to undeniable successes in beating schedules and competitors, but it has also wrought disaster: One of the most telling anecdotes in the book concerns Musk’s “demon mode” order to relocate thousands of Twitter servers from Sacramento to Portland at breakneck speed, which trashed big parts of the system for months. To judge by Isaacson’s account, that may have been by design, for Musk’s idea of creative destruction seems to mean mostly chaos.
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9781982181284
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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