Important documentation of how mechanisms favored by the 1 percent increase global inequalities.
Sharply observed descent into the labyrinth of finance and semantics with which nations and the superrich secure their wealth.
Abrahamian unravels the opaque world of “special economic zones” and other places she terms “legal fictions,” where national and economic boundaries are blurred. She examines “how consultants, lawyers, financiers, and other mercenaries have carved out physical and virtual space above, below, and between nations.” Her research entailed travel to places that “are a product of colonialism, capitalism, technology, megalomania, and a pinch of alchemy,” including remote regions of Laos (economically co-opted by China) and an “open” Norwegian settlement near the North Pole. Other areas she investigates are the wide use in shipping of deceptive flags of convenience and likely future struggles over asteroid mining and ownership of space. Her focus begins appropriately with Geneva, where she grew up, termed a “City of Holes” for its legendary discretion, “a kind of black hole straddling globalization and regulation," forever marked by the “steep moral cost” of its financial complicity with the Nazis during World War II. She describes the Geneva Freeport warehouse as an example of actual physical spaces not fully subject to state controls, “essentially a legal hack” with a clear role in hiding artworks for the rich to evade taxes. Other chapters examine how Western financial interests promoted “free-trade zones” in remote nations like Mauritius, noting, “This made it profitable for American firms to seek out manufacturing opportunities abroad rather than making products in the U.S., where labor cost more.” Abrahamian also considers trendy concepts like “charter cities,” noting, “To cede this territory to rigidly ideological capitalists alone would be a big mistake.” Her well-researched, engrossing work manages the minutiae of several fields, including telecommunications, maritime law, and fine art, to stitch together a multilayered tale of how privilege works to protect itself.
Important documentation of how mechanisms favored by the 1 percent increase global inequalities.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2024
ISBN: 9780593329856
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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