A concise and expert primer on arms training.
A guide offers a radical reconsideration of arms training coupled with a discussion of bias in law enforcement.
Salomon makes the provocative argument that a thoughtless fidelity to training standards has become a liability in the cosmos of armed professions, including law enforcement and the military: “We should get rid of the notion that standards, in and of themselves, either comprise training or should be the objective of training.” Instead of preparing for “real-world performance,” shooters practice for an examination that is as arbitrary as it is inefficient. At the heart of the problem is limited resources—firing ranges are scarce and ammunition is expensive—and the fact that fears of liability result in a dearth of qualified instructors. Trainers are “deathly afraid” of potentially lethal accidents. The author recommends an approach, articulated at length in Salomon’s previous work, Building Shooters (2016), based on the “architecture and function of the human brain.” According to the author, there are three basic memory systems for human beings: short-term memory, long-term declarative memory, and long-term procedural memory. Only the last of these is accessed during times of intense stress, Salomon asserts, and so any training method must focus on this particular storehouse of information. In this series opener, the author’s expertise in arms training is beyond reproach, and his knowledge of the relevant literature on neuroscience is impressive, especially for a layperson. In addition, he draws intriguing—and timely—implications from the same neuroscience regarding debates about police bias that are both sober and thoughtful. And his prose is lucidly blunt and snappy: “Real-world events vary in innumerable ways, and the only consistent performance metric is who is still vertical after the fact.” This is a well-researched introduction to a complex set of issues, and given the contemporary debates regarding policing, the work may even interest general readers.
A concise and expert primer on arms training.Pub Date: June 9, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-952594-07-6
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Innovative Services and Solutions LLC
Review Posted Online: July 22, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
SEEN & HEARD
Maher calls out idiocy wherever he sees it, with a comedic delivery that veers between a stiletto and a sledgehammer.
The comedian argues that the arts of moderation and common sense must be reinvigorated.
Some people are born snarky, some become snarky, and some have snarkiness thrust upon them. Judging from this book, Maher—host of HBO’s Real Time program and author of The New New Rules and When You Ride Alone, You Ride With bin Laden—is all three. As a comedian, he has a great deal of leeway to make fun of people in politics, and he often delivers hilarious swipes with a deadpan face. The author describes himself as a traditional liberal, with a disdain for Republicans (especially the MAGA variety) and a belief in free speech and personal freedom. He claims that he has stayed much the same for more than 20 years, while the left, he argues, has marched toward intolerance. He sees an addiction to extremism on both sides of the aisle, which fosters the belief that anyone who disagrees with you must be an enemy to be destroyed. However, Maher has always displayed his own streaks of extremism, and his scorched-earth takedowns eventually become problematic. The author has something nasty to say about everyone, it seems, and the sarcastic tone starts after more than 300 pages. As has been the case throughout his career, Maher is best taken in small doses. The book is worth reading for the author’s often spot-on skewering of inept politicians and celebrities, but it might be advisable to occasionally dip into it rather than read the whole thing in one sitting. Some parts of the text are hilarious, but others are merely insulting. Maher is undeniably talented, but some restraint would have produced a better book.
Maher calls out idiocy wherever he sees it, with a comedic delivery that veers between a stiletto and a sledgehammer.Pub Date: May 21, 2024
ISBN: 9781668051351
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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