A worthy tool for liberal educators, but it is not likely to change the minds of conservatives who feel that prisoners are...
A graphic primer on the inequities of the American penal system, presumably aimed at students who have yet to form an opinion on the subject.
The third iteration of this title is one that even author Mauer (Invisible Punishment, 2002) writes is “certainly not a version that I would ever have anticipated.” It distills the influential 1999 text and subsequent update into a version that would have more emotional resonance, or, as the foreword by Michelle Alexander puts it, “would be engaging and accessible to young readers and people in all walks of life, not just policy wonks.” As illustrated by Jones (Isadora Duncan: A Graphic Biography, 2008), the simplified condensation hits all the high points: the racial disparities faced by those in the judicial system (particularly in regard to drug cases), the growth of the prison industry, the price paid for the “War on Drugs,” “Law and Order” and “Three Strikes and You’re Out” campaigns, and the tension and conflict between deterrence (and punishment) and rehabilitation. Even comparatively liberal President Bill Clinton failed to reverse a trend in which more than two decades of spending “had bloated the prison system, while cuts to social programs had starved the inner cities.” Where middle-class whites are often allowed to seek treatment for drug abuse, black users more often face prison, with mandated sentences. “Looking back on two centuries of prison in America, how little has changed,” the text maintains. “The basic concept is caging humans.” Though conservatives claim that the increase in incarceration has reduced crime, this manifesto argues that other factors have contributed to this decline. The graphic narrative builds the basic case for human values rather than draconian punishment, for investment in social services rather than the prison industry.
A worthy tool for liberal educators, but it is not likely to change the minds of conservatives who feel that prisoners are getting what they deserve.Pub Date: April 2, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-59558-541-7
Page Count: 128
Publisher: The New Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2013
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
PERSPECTIVES
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
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