A controversial work that is sure to spark debate—and a painstaking and temperate argument, written with a good command of...
A fresh perspective on British history, in which Cannadine (The Rise and Fall of Class in Britain, 1999, etc.) argues against racial interpretations of colonialism and maintains that the British Empire was sustained by a universal respect for social class.
Recent decades have seen the rise of identity politics within the academy. One result of this phenomenon has been a growing tendency among historians to regard European imperialism as a conquest that was driven and held together by principles of racial superiority. Seen in this light, the “white man’s burden” was an ironic enterprise at best, insofar as it relied upon a false and utterly self-serving view of the inferior capabilities of the subject peoples (who, invariably, were nonwhite). Cannadine, however, argues that this interpretation is an oversimplification that ignores an essential reality of British attitudes toward the native populations. The prejudices that the Englishman bore against the Indian, African, or Asian were precisely the same that he held against his fellow countrymen—namely, that they formed a hierarchical society in which a few enlightened souls stood together at top against an ignorant and vicious rabble below. Thus, the colonial administrators always tried to rely as much as possible on the preexisting structures of authority (maharajas, native chieftains, etc.) in establishing the order of their rule—and the author points out how the native populations, more often than not, responded enthusiastically to attempts to strengthen their loyalty to the British crown (most notably through military service in bloody wars that usually addressed few issues of much concern to them). Ironically, Cannadine finds the most blatant acceptance of racism among the white settlers (the Boers and the Americans, primarily) who were the most dissatisfied with British rule.
A controversial work that is sure to spark debate—and a painstaking and temperate argument, written with a good command of the facts and a remarkable sense of proportion.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-19-514660-3
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2001
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
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
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