A well-reasoned, occasionally shrill critique of the crypto universe.
Actor McKenzie continues his long-standing denunciation of cryptocurrency.
Matt Damon hawked crypto in ads during NFL games. Kim Kardashian made such extraordinary claims for it that it drew the attention of British regulators—though, in the U.S., “Kardashian’s promotion was initially met with typical regulatory silence.” Crypto seemed to be just the thing for the rich and powerful, a means of hiding transactions via the secrecy associated with a financial instrument that isn’t really a currency, at least by American law. Writing with financial journalist Silverman, McKenzie charges that since crypto behaves like a security, and an unregulated one at that, its price “jumps up and down like a rabbit on amphetamines.” Furthermore, the technology doesn’t scale well enough, it’s environmentally disastrous because it requires so much electricity to “mine,” and it’s surrounded by “fraudsters” and “con men.” Ethereum, founded in 2015 and the “second largest cryptocurrency as of this writing,” appears to be a smoke-and-mirrors operation, while Tether “was as if a random group of middling ne’er-do-wells had been issued their own money printer,” a bomb waiting to take down the entire system of casino capitalism. The author chronicles how some of the less cautious principals were taken down by international police forces, while others simply disappeared after their businesses evaporated—but not, he adds, before a few of them bought yachts. As for Kardashian, she was “fined $1.26 million by the SEC for her participation in shilling the shitcoin Ethereum Max”—even if she was just a willing tool and not herself a fraudster. “Would anyone in crypto ever see the inside of a jail cell?” asks McKenzie. At least since the author finished the book, it appears that at least one or two—Sam Bankman-Fried most notable among them—are on the way to the slammer.
A well-reasoned, occasionally shrill critique of the crypto universe.Pub Date: July 18, 2023
ISBN: 9781419766398
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2023
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.
Bearing witness to oppression.
Award-winning journalist and MacArthur Fellow Coates probes the narratives that shape our perception of the world through his reports on three journeys: to Dakar, Senegal, the last stop for Black Africans “before the genocide and rebirth of the Middle Passage”; to Chapin, South Carolina, where controversy erupted over a writing teacher’s use of Between the World and Me in class; and to Israel and Palestine, where he spent 10 days in a “Holy Land of barbed wire, settlers, and outrageous guns.” By addressing the essays to students in his writing workshop at Howard University in 2022, Coates makes a literary choice similar to the letter to his son that informed Between the World and Me; as in that book, the choice creates a sense of intimacy between writer and reader. Interweaving autobiography and reportage, Coates examines race, his identity as a Black American, and his role as a public intellectual. In Dakar, he is haunted by ghosts of his ancestors and “the shade of Niggerology,” a pseudoscientific narrative put forth to justify enslavement by portraying Blacks as inferior. In South Carolina, the 22-acre State House grounds, dotted with Confederate statues, continue to impart a narrative of white supremacy. His trip to the Middle East inspires the longest and most impassioned essay: “I don’t think I ever, in my life, felt the glare of racism burn stranger and more intense than in Israel,” he writes. In his complex analysis, he sees the trauma of the Holocaust playing a role in Israel’s tactics in the Middle East: “The wars against the Palestinians and their Arab allies were a kind of theater in which ‘weak Jews’ who went ‘like lambs to slaughter’ were supplanted by Israelis who would ‘fight back.’” Roiled by what he witnessed, Coates feels speechless, unable to adequately convey Palestinians’ agony; their reality “demands new messengers, tasked as we all are, with nothing less than saving the world.”
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9780593230381
Page Count: 176
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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