Small ably traces how China went from partner to rival to threat and maps out the challenges that it now poses for the West.
A longtime China watcher takes a close look at the country’s ambitions, attitudes, and ruthless diplomatic and economic methods.
When China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, many policymakers believed the nation would become an honest trading partner and responsible global citizen. Now, however, the Chinese government is viewed as secretive, belligerent, and wildly ambitious. Whereas most of the world treats globalization as a framework for trade and growth, China apparently sees it as the basis for a hierarchy with itself as the dominant force. How, asks Small, who has worked for a range of policy think tanks, did this transition happen? He follows a number of connected themes, although he sees a major trigger in the attempts of the Beijing-backed firm Huawei to establish 5G infrastructure around the world, using it as a means of control. Australia was the first country to reject Huawei, and others followed. China responded with insults and threats of retaliation, which cemented its reputation as a bully. European governments had also become aware that China was buying up critical infrastructure assets and companies in other countries. Another issue was China’s complete rejection of any responsibility for the Covid-19 pandemic despite mounting evidence that it had started there. “As the Chinese government’s growing self-confidence has bled into hubris, and as the polished, pragmatic heirs of Zhou Enlai have made way for diplomatic thugs,” writes Small, “the clarity of the challenge posed by China has sharpened.” Though China has bought a few allies with financial aid, notes the author, there is no underlying trust. Meanwhile, anti-China coalitions are building. Beijing’s methods have created the very situation it feared: everyone against it. Some of the ground in the book has already been covered, but Small does a good job tying the threads together and providing historical context, making for a comprehensive, if worrying, text.
Small ably traces how China went from partner to rival to threat and maps out the challenges that it now poses for the West.Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-68589-019-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Melville House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2022
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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: 288
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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SEEN & HEARD
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