Outstanding, only modestly alarmist geopolitics.
A combination of historical survey and contemporary analysis at the intersection of globalization and naval power.
Though writers regularly deplore globalization and few extol the massive American Navy, Easterbrook delivers an intensely researched, largely admiring account of both. Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, write the author, agree that world trade often “hurts American workers,” but this is “flat-earth thinking.” However, “in the most recent century-length period, 1920 to 2020, global population trebled, while global GDP rose twentyfold.” World poverty plummeted, while trade’s share of the world economy jumped from 5% to 25%, and “95 percent of goods in commerce travel via water." Members of our so-called blue age, writes Easterbrook, “have lived better than any generation before, sacrificed less…been safer, and received better care than any other generation, in part because the seas are tranquil and affordable goods arrive on time.” Essential to trade are titanic container vessels that sail the world’s essentially ungoverned oceans, dominated for almost a century by the U.S. Navy. Shipping a container from Shanghai to Los Angeles today costs less than moving that same container across LA. Policing this is expensive; the 2020 “Navy budget worked out to $700 per American adult.” But recent presidents have largely ignored sea power, and Americans pay little attention except when denouncing globalization. Like many before him, Easterbrook warns that climate change could derail progress by roiling ocean conditions and disrupting food production. Most ominously, a resurgent China aims for “military parity” by 2049, and few doubt that this will happen. The author emphasizes that the blue age will continue only if the U.S. and China can get along. Easterbrook is fighting an uphill battle, but he makes a reasonable and convincing case that international trade under the benign aegis of the U.S. Navy plays an essential role that will not continue unless we adapt to a changing world.
Outstanding, only modestly alarmist geopolitics.Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5417-4254-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
