A valuable resource for a wide array of interested parties, from students to recent immigrants of all ages.
A debut civics book delivers the basics of American government.
It’s often said that Americans know very little about their own history. How many have actually read the full text of the Constitution, as students or adults? In this handy guide, Mackley aims to remedy that situation and present fundamental knowledge traditionally taught in civics classes. Thus, she includes the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the 27 Amendments in their entirety. For good measure, she provides all four versions of the “Pledge of Allegiance” and all four stanzas of the national anthem. One notable chart compiles a list of U.S. presidents—along with political party, term, date of birth, age upon election, first lady, and vice president—that serves as a quick reference guide for those who wish to become naturalized American citizens or even for trivia buffs who want to brush up on their encyclopedic knowledge. New in this second edition is a 100-question exam, culled from a government website, presented with and without correct answers for the purposes of self-evaluation. In a compendium of this sort that addresses early American history, parameters of inclusion often become an issue; the author recognizes that in-depth accounts of Native American or African-American contributions and experiences will necessarily be found elsewhere. To her credit, Mackley insists that a more interactive approach to learning about history should be enhanced by travel and firsthand contact. Therefore, she provides suggestions regarding historic sites and national parks, many of which hold a direct connection to the events recounted in this volume. Overall, there’s no denying that it is helpful to have all of this information gathered in one place. This book is perhaps more suitable for those who may not be entirely comfortable navigating through online sources.
A valuable resource for a wide array of interested parties, from students to recent immigrants of all ages.Pub Date: June 20, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5142-2156-3
Page Count: 298
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 8, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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