An impassioned argument heavier on critique than solutions.
The future of democracy depends on engaged, media-literate citizens.
Media critics Higdon (History and Media Studies/California State Univ., East Bay, and Univ. of San Francisco), a co-founding member of the Global Critical Media Literacy Project, and Huff (Social Science and History/Diablo Valley Coll.; co-editor: Censored 2019: The Top Censored Stories and Media Analysis of 2017-2018, 2019, etc.), executive producer and co-host of the weekly radio show Project Censored, paint a dismal picture of contemporary journalism, arguing persuasively that the media has been co-opted by commercial interests and no longer serve to inform the public about issues crucial to democracy. “The business-dominant economy” that has emerged since the Reagan years, the authors assert, has created “a veritable one-party system—the pro-corporate party—with two factions, the Republicans and the Democrats, funded to uphold corporate interests above all others.” Because commercial media exist “to attract, harvest, and sell people’s consciousness to advertisers,” they have seen Donald Trump as a sure way to boost ratings. The authors devote more than half of the book to reprising Trump’s familiar, much-publicized lies and excoriating the media for giving him out-of-proportion coverage. Rather than conducting responsible investigation, disseminating information, and analyzing political issues, the media inflame polarization, “fostering a militant ‘us versus them’ mentality in regard to competing candidates, issues, and ideas.” A critically savvy public would be able to see through these strategies, but, the authors insist, “information literacy and media education are practically non-existent,” leaving Americans vulnerable to “the torrent of images and messages vying for their attention.” Education reform and a revitalized press are needed for a “free, self-governing society to thrive.” To that end, the authors call for “critical media literacy education” that emphasizes civics, critical thinking skills, critical awareness of media, community engagement, and cultural competency (including the cultivation of empathy) as well as a broadening and deepening of news reporting. Advocating new teacher-training programs and extensive curriculum changes, the authors offer few details about how these reforms can be developed and instituted.
An impassioned argument heavier on critique than solutions.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-87286-767-3
Page Count: 238
Publisher: City Lights
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019
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
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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