A probing, well-informed investigation of global unrest calling for “truly transformative thinking” about humanity’s future.
How the failures of capitalism have led to “fear, confusion, loneliness and loss”—and global anger.
In this ambitious, deeply researched analysis, social critic and novelist Mishra (From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals Who Remade Asia, 2012, etc.) makes a persuasive argument that industrialism and capitalism have spawned virulent expressions of anger. He sees current upheaval—which fuels the Islamic State group and led to Brexit and Donald Trump’s political success—stemming from the same source “as myriad Romantic revolts and rebellions of early nineteenth-century Europe”—i.e., “the mismatch between personal expectations, heightened by a traumatic break with the past, and the cruelly unresponsive reality of slow change.” Individual freedom can feel terrifying, leading to a desire for an authoritative leader and, as Tocqueville put it, an “insatiable need for action, violent emotions, vicissitudes, and dangers.” Mishra argues against taking an “us-them” view of the world as a contest between Western rationalism and “Islamofascism” but instead blames the current malaise on the West’s insistence on the superiority of Enlightenment philosophy and failure to deliver on its promise of progress. As the author writes, a “promised universal civilization—one harmonized by a combination of universal suffrage, broad educational opportunities, steady economic growth, and private initiative and personal advancement—has not materialized.” Most people, he believes, live fearfully in a world that they see they cannot control; they feel under siege by grisly horrors perpetrated by enemies, by the present and future effects of climate change, and by “arrogant and deceptive elites” who make them feel humiliated. Mishra bases his sage analysis on the “eclectic ideas” of European social theorists, including Dostoyevsky, Arendt, Heine, Marx, and scores of others. He especially highlights the contrast between Voltaire, “an unequivocal top-down modernizer,” and Rousseau, who “tried to outline a social order where morals, virtue and human character rather than commerce and money were central to politics.”
A probing, well-informed investigation of global unrest calling for “truly transformative thinking” about humanity’s future.Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-374-27478-8
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Dec. 24, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2017
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
