Fagan (Time Detectives, 1995, etc.) draws on his archaeology background to intriguingly explore the correlation between unusual climatic shifts and unusual historical events. El Ni§o is a blooming of warm Pacific water, pushing eastward along the tropics, bucking the northeast trade winds. For years it was thought to be a localized anomaly particular to the northern Peruvian coast. Now it is appreciated as a colossal climatic happening that interacts with other climatic systems as part of a global weather machine. Fagan traces El Ni§o from its first reckonings to the large-scale weather predictions made today when satellites detect its upwelling appearance. He then goes on to speculate on how El Ni§o’s hell spawn—catastrophic extended drought and biblical storms—may have contributed to the demise of ancient civilizations. Drawing examples from pharaonic Egypt, early Mesopotamia, the Anasazi of North America, the Moche world of northern Peru, and the flamboyant classic Mayans, Fagan describes how these peoples responded to the curveballs (50-year droughts that robbed their artful irrigation works of water, rain that washed away their guano, currents that stole their anchovies) thrown at them by El Ni§o. Some moved; some muddled through, diminished; some had the flexibility to find ways to make the land more productive; others collapsed, their already stressed environment caving in before the climatic assault that additionally undermined the peoples’ faith in their divinities and in the omnipotence of their rulers. Lastly, Fagan points to El Ni§o’s savagings today of people who are the least equipped to face it: the delta dwellers in their ramshackle huts, the farmers and others at the mercy of landowners and political bosses who thrive on the manipulation of relief aid. It is to Fagan’s credit that he doesn’t attribute to El Ni§o sole responsibility for the march of history but rather neatly fits its cruel weather into the matrix of circumstances that pushed great civilizations to—and some over—the brink. (20 maps and drawings, not seen) (Radio satellite tour)
Pub Date: March 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-465-01120-9
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1999
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
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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