Something to leave under the tree for that relative who can’t get enough of Ayn Rand, insistent that there are values to...
“Overeducated cartoonist” Gonick, the pen behind numerous cartoon guides to scientific and historical subjects (The Cartoon History of the Universe, etc.), returns with this look at the reigning economic system of the day.
Hypercapitalism, Kasser (Chair, Psychology/Knox Coll.; Lucy in the Mind of Lennon, 2013, etc.) writes in his accompanying text, is “a system that celebrates materialism, consumerism, and status.” It does so, he continues, at the expense of other values that could be more important, such as community, public education, environmental quality, and other like matters. Psychological studies indicate that those who fall under the spell of consumerist cultism care demonstrably less for such things as treating other people fairly and not ravaging the planet. That a psychologist and not an economist is writing about economic matters is telling, for the thrust of the argument is really one of values: not the price-setting values of supply and demand but instead those that determine whether one needs a gadget and whether by buying it he or she will improve someone else’s life. “The idea here,” writes Kasser, “is to be mindful of one’s values and act accordingly when buying things.” Of course, as an alarmed postindustrialist might say, if everyone were to act on such values, then the entire enterprise would collapse—which, the authors suggest, is the whole point, substituting an entrepreneurial spirit for saving the world for making a fortune. Those who are familiar with Gonick’s pleasingly Mad-influenced style will find no surprises in his straightforward presentation, and Kasser doesn’t deliver much news—indeed, his argument is reminiscent of the pop-cultural criticism of Vance Packard, Erich Fromm, and Alvin Toffler of decades past. Still, though it lacks the punch of a Piketty or a Stiglitz, it’s a timely counter to those who celebrate predatory economics as the best of all possible financial worlds.
Something to leave under the tree for that relative who can’t get enough of Ayn Rand, insistent that there are values to cherish other than selfishness.Pub Date: Jan. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-62097-282-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: The New Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 8, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2017
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 moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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