The myriad topics sometimes blur together, but the discussion is astute and relevant.
The follow-up to Targeting Iran (2007).
In a Q&A format about the continued demonization of Iran by the U.S., Barsamian enlists the expertise of five longtime observers: Noam Chomsky, Azadeh Moaveni, Trita Parsi, Ervand Abrahamian, and Nader Hashemi. In the wake of the Trump administration's canceling of Obama's Iran nuclear deal (aka the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, adopted in 2015) as well as the recent U.S. assassination of a prominent Iranian general, Barsamian gets at the key to the deterioration of the relationship between the two nations. His expert contributors dig into a variety of topics: the general breakdown in relations since Iran’s Islamic Revolution of 1979; the failure of U.S. sanctions; the gains in education and civil rights for women in Iran even as censorship and repression have tightened; and the outsized role of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. Parsi, who advised Obama on the JCPOA deal, notes the role Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had in unwittingly pushing the agreement along: "He thought that he could force the U.S. to take military action, but he underestimated Obama and he misread the American public, which has been adamantly against another war." Abrahamian, author and professor emeritus of Iranian and Middle Eastern history and politics, offers a wise overview of Iran, its history, and political makeup. Longtime MIT professor Chomsky argues that the U.S. has no right to impose sanctions on Iran or force it to "capitulate" in any way. Furthermore, he notes, the U.S. under Trump is now “the world’s leading rogue state.” Moaveni, a journalist, writer (Lipstick Jihad, etc.), and academic, speaks on women and society, and Hashemi, director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Denver, discusses Iranian politics and the reform movement, noting that “we are now witnessing the worst moment in U.S.–Iran relations in over forty years.”
The myriad topics sometimes blur together, but the discussion is astute and relevant.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-87286-804-5
Page Count: 200
Publisher: City Lights
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2020
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
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
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