A hackle-raising book about nature and human nature, venality and justice, and how disasters—before, during, and...
How the most significant deleterious factor in natural disasters may be the human element.
“Disasters can conceal as much as they reveal,” writes Mutter (Earth and Environmental Sciences, International and Public Affairs/Columbia Univ.) in this plainspoken but urgent book. The author examines the intersection of the tragic loss of life and livelihood with civic irresponsibility and personal/institutional venality, played out through ill-preparedness and opportunistic aftermaths of the event. In doing so, Mutter endeavors to approach disasters panoptically, considering both sides of what he calls the Feynman line: that the natural and social sciences are inextricably linked in how we contend with hazards and disasters. It has everything to do with wealth, poverty, vulnerability, resilience, corruption, cronyism, racism, and a whole cacophony of social ills. Mutter frames matters clearly: capital works for its holders, who ensure that their capital grows by being close to the center of power in order to manipulate policy and lawmaking to their advantage. Think of the former vice president, Dick Cheney, who ran “Kellogg Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, which...received tens of millions of dollars in no-bid contracts for reconstruction work” after Hurricane Katrina. Mutter presents a wealth of material evidence as well as social science theory—using the United States, Haiti, and Myanmar as examples—to explain how the elite class, without oversight, makes decisions as to where and what will be rebuilt, allocates lucrative contracts, and exploits the “opportunity to reshape society in order to secure its hold on power and capital.” The author delves into realms of racial bias (who’s a “thief” when looting, who’s just a “survivor”), panic response, the “Samaritan’s dilemma,” and “creative destruction.” He concludes that post-disaster risk reduction must be realistic, that reconstruction must be inclusive, and that neutral parties must ensure the appropriate use of relief funds: obvious, yes; practiced, rarely.
A hackle-raising book about nature and human nature, venality and justice, and how disasters—before, during, and after—sharply mirror society.Pub Date: Aug. 11, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-137-27898-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2015
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
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics,...
A provocative analysis of the parallels between Donald Trump’s ascent and the fall of other democracies.
Following the last presidential election, Levitsky (Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America, 2003, etc.) and Ziblatt (Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy, 2017, etc.), both professors of government at Harvard, wrote an op-ed column titled, “Is Donald Trump a Threat to Democracy?” The answer here is a resounding yes, though, as in that column, the authors underscore their belief that the crisis extends well beyond the power won by an outsider whom they consider a demagogue and a liar. “Donald Trump may have accelerated the process, but he didn’t cause it,” they write of the politics-as-warfare mentality. “The weakening of our democratic norms is rooted in extreme partisan polarization—one that extends beyond policy differences into an existential conflict over race and culture.” The authors fault the Republican establishment for failing to stand up to Trump, even if that meant electing his opponent, and they seem almost wistfully nostalgic for the days when power brokers in smoke-filled rooms kept candidacies restricted to a club whose members knew how to play by the rules. Those supporting the candidacy of Bernie Sanders might take as much issue with their prescriptions as Trump followers will. However, the comparisons they draw to how democratic populism paved the way toward tyranny in Peru, Venezuela, Chile, and elsewhere are chilling. Among the warning signs they highlight are the Republican Senate’s refusal to consider Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee as well as Trump’s demonization of political opponents, minorities, and the media. As disturbing as they find the dismantling of Democratic safeguards, Levitsky and Ziblatt suggest that “a broad opposition coalition would have important benefits,” though such a coalition would strike some as a move to the center, a return to politics as usual, and even a pragmatic betrayal of principles.
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics, rather than in the consensus it is not likely to build.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6293-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
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