A well-reasoned argument that, given the arrival of a like-minded administration, may soon prove to have legs.
A book from the Patriotic Millionaires group demands that wealthy Americans contribute vastly more to the public treasury.
Pearl, Payne, and their fellow philanthropic millionaires have a dire warning for the ultrawealthy: “You cannot continue to sit by and enjoy your riches while the rest of the world falls further into poverty and chaos….Reread your history books. Dysfunctional societies don’t end well for rich people either.” Though being rich is a fine thing—“I would recommend it to anyone,” Pearl breezily notes—it carries certain responsibilities as well as considerable freedoms. An equitable tax code is a start. The current system was built for the rich and by the rich, and it is structured so that it actively militates against building a strong middle class, predicated on fictions such as the trickle-down theory of economics. Inequality is rampant, and with it, instability and strife grow. This is all by design, write the authors. Against it, they talk economics. By reason of the theory of marginal utility, which holds that a person who has lots of units of something—dollars, say—will value an added unit less than a person who has few of them, those who have more money than they know what to do with will scarcely register a tax hike. Doing away with carried-interest deductions, putting capital gains rates on par with the rates applied to earned income, and taxing inheritances will do their part, too. The authors note that the current tax mess can’t be laid only at the door of Republicans, and they charge that it’s up to the people to rise up not violently but politically by voting for those who will advance a more equitable system: “If the American people are paying attention…they can have the kind of tax code they want, regardless of who’s in charge.”
A well-reasoned argument that, given the arrival of a like-minded administration, may soon prove to have legs.Pub Date: April 13, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-62097-626-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: The New Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2021
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.
An Egyptian Canadian journalist writes searchingly of this time of war.
“Rules, conventions, morals, reality itself: all exist so long as their existence is convenient to the preservation of power.” So writes El Akkad, who goes on to state that one of the demands of modern power is that those subject to it must imagine that some group of people somewhere are not fully human. El Akkad’s pointed example is Gaza, the current destruction of which, he writes, is causing millions of people around the world to examine the supposedly rules-governed, democratic West and declare, “I want nothing to do with this.” El Akkad, author of the novel American War (2017), discerns hypocrisy and racism in the West’s defense of Ukraine and what he views as indifference toward the Palestinian people. No stranger to war zones himself—El Akkad was a correspondent in Afghanistan and Iraq—he writes with grim matter-of-factness about murdered children, famine, and the deliberate targeting of civilians. With no love for Zionism lost, he offers an equally harsh critique of Hamas, yet another one of the “entities obsessed with violence as an ethos, brutal in their treatment of minority groups who in their view should not exist, and self-decreed to be the true protectors of an entire religion.” Taking a global view, El Akkad, who lives in the U.S., finds almost every government and society wanting, and not least those, he says, that turn away and pretend not to know, behavior that we’ve seen before and that, in the spirit of his title, will one day be explained away until, in the end, it comes down to “a quiet unheard reckoning in the winter of life between the one who said nothing, did nothing, and their own soul.”
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593804148
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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