An expert analysis of several critical problems with sensible, if not likely, solutions.
Another plea for the world to get its act together.
Eurasia Group founder Bremmer sets the stage early on: “Faced with dysfunction at the heart of American politics, poisoned relations between America and China, a broken global system, and with vitally important questions to answer, where is the way forward?” The solution? “We need crises scary enough to make us forge a new international system that promotes effective cooperation on a few crucial questions.” The author finds three that qualify: pandemics, climate change, and the ubiquity of digital technology. Numerous books examine (and deplore) all three, but Bremmer’s account is notable for its clear prose and concision. No one doubts that better planning and global cooperation would have lessened the devastating effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. Readers unfamiliar with climate change will encounter an excellent introduction to the science and tactics to combat it, which, except for in parts of Europe, remain largely in the realm of rhetoric. Digital technology is revolutionizing our lives, sometimes for the better, but its disruptive effects seem out of control. Data is routinely mishandled or ignored, and the cheerful prediction that automation will create jobs as well as eliminate them remains unfulfilled. That the internet revolution would empower individuals at the expense of the government and spread democracy was widely proclaimed—20 years ago. One rarely hears the same message today, when social media has become a source of disruption, fake news, and conspiracy theories as well as a tool of oppression and violence. Bremmer, the author of Us vs. Them: The Failure of Globalism and other relevant books, offers a vivid description of how the world is dealing with these crises—so far ineffectually. The author’s entirely reasonable solutions involve government action, self-sacrifice, and tolerance of opposing opinions, all of which are in short supply at the moment.
An expert analysis of several critical problems with sensible, if not likely, solutions.Pub Date: May 17, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-982167-50-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 14, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2022
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
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
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