A vital, page-turning education.
A convincing argument that most of what we believe about immigration is wrong.
De Haas, a professor of sociology at the University of Amsterdam and founding member of Oxford’s International Migration Institute, has spent his career investigating migration, but whenever he speaks before a general audience, the result is “petty bickering.” Provided one is not an ideologue, it’s entertaining when an expert debunks popular myths, and the author debunks one in each of his 22 chapters. From 1960 to 2017, the number of global international migrants rose from 93 million to 247 million. That doesn’t mean immigration is skyrocketing, however, since Earth’s population increased by the same percentage over that period. The “heyday of transatlantic migration” was the 19th century, when tens of millions of Europeans were colonizing the world. In the 19th century, critics warned that immigrants were destroying American culture. “It may be difficult to imagine now,” writes the author, “but Germans, Italians, Irish, Polish, Japanese, Jews and Catholics were once seen as unassimilable and even a menace to the nation in ways that are not fundamentally different from the way Muslims and Latinos have been portrayed in more recent times.” Although less inclined to demonize immigrants, liberals display their own share of prejudice. Believing that immigrants are fleeing poverty (another myth), they propose sending massive aid to poor nations, certain that once citizens have jobs, they’ll stay home. Not only is this a myth; the opposite is true. Immigration is expensive, and the penniless can’t afford to travel. Immigrants move to other countries for jobs (not a myth), and those countries need their labor. The world’s leading emigrators—Mexico, Turkey, India, and the Philippines—are not impoverished, but middle-income countries. It’s unlikely that many of the people who should read this book will do so, but everyone else will relish the lesson.
A vital, page-turning education.Pub Date: Dec. 19, 2023
ISBN: 9781541604315
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2023
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.
Documenting perilous times.
In his most recent behind-the-scenes account of political power and how it is wielded, Woodward synthesizes several narrative strands, from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel to the 2024 presidential campaign. Woodward’s clear, gripping storytelling benefits from his legendary access to prominent figures and a structure of propulsive chapters. The run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is tense (if occasionally repetitive), as a cast of geopolitical insiders try to divine Vladimir Putin’s intent: “Doubt among allies, the public and among Ukrainians meant valuable time and space for Putin to maneuver.” Against this backdrop, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham implores Donald Trump to run again, notwithstanding the former president’s denial of his 2020 defeat. This provides unwelcome distraction for President Biden, portrayed as a thoughtful, compassionate lifetime politico who could not outrace time, as demonstrated in the June 2024 debate. Throughout, Trump’s prevarications and his supporters’ cynicism provide an unsettling counterpoint to warnings provided by everyone from former Joint Chief of Staff Mark Milley to Vice President Kamala Harris, who calls a second Trump term a likely “death knell for American democracy.” The author’s ambitious scope shows him at the top of his capabilities. He concludes with these unsettling words: “Based on my reporting, Trump’s language and conduct has at times presented risks to national security—both during his presidency and afterward.”
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781668052273
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
IN THE NEWS
PERSPECTIVES
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.
Bearing witness to oppression.
Award-winning journalist and MacArthur Fellow Coates probes the narratives that shape our perception of the world through his reports on three journeys: to Dakar, Senegal, the last stop for Black Africans “before the genocide and rebirth of the Middle Passage”; to Chapin, South Carolina, where controversy erupted over a writing teacher’s use of Between the World and Me in class; and to Israel and Palestine, where he spent 10 days in a “Holy Land of barbed wire, settlers, and outrageous guns.” By addressing the essays to students in his writing workshop at Howard University in 2022, Coates makes a literary choice similar to the letter to his son that informed Between the World and Me; as in that book, the choice creates a sense of intimacy between writer and reader. Interweaving autobiography and reportage, Coates examines race, his identity as a Black American, and his role as a public intellectual. In Dakar, he is haunted by ghosts of his ancestors and “the shade of Niggerology,” a pseudoscientific narrative put forth to justify enslavement by portraying Blacks as inferior. In South Carolina, the 22-acre State House grounds, dotted with Confederate statues, continue to impart a narrative of white supremacy. His trip to the Middle East inspires the longest and most impassioned essay: “I don’t think I ever, in my life, felt the glare of racism burn stranger and more intense than in Israel,” he writes. In his complex analysis, he sees the trauma of the Holocaust playing a role in Israel’s tactics in the Middle East: “The wars against the Palestinians and their Arab allies were a kind of theater in which ‘weak Jews’ who went ‘like lambs to slaughter’ were supplanted by Israelis who would ‘fight back.’” Roiled by what he witnessed, Coates feels speechless, unable to adequately convey Palestinians’ agony; their reality “demands new messengers, tasked as we all are, with nothing less than saving the world.”
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9780593230381
Page Count: 176
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
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