An overambitious but richly thought-provoking new interpretation of human history.
Hetherington offers a comprehensive reexamination of many aspects of American politics and society.
Coming from a 40-year background in geology and geophysics, the author has written this big book intending to help general readers who want to better understand “history, ideology, economics, their own political positions, and those of their opponents.” The principal tool he uses to aid this understanding is a concept he calls the Power Matrix, which “illustrates social systems based on how decisions are made in society.” (The Power Matrix “makes it easy to distinguish between illiberalism and liberalism and socialism and capitalism.”) Hetherington also explores the phenomenon he calls “the Great Enrichment,” the fact that modern humans “enjoy unparalleled levels of freedom, wealth, safety, entertainment, and health, with billions of people living better than ancient kings.” As Hetherington sees it, this leap forward was driven by social and political upheaval and “ignited by a colossal infusion of energy that was initially and today is mostly supplied by fossil fuels.” The book covers an enormous range of topics, from cosmology to religion to human evolution to economic considerations stretching over many centuries to the present moment, when “globalization is making inexpensive goods and services more available, making life in developed countries better and more affordable even for the poor.” Throughout the text, the author provocatively challenges the fixed positions of his readers, encouraging them to reevaluate many of their opinions on social and political issues. Hetherington’s scope is far too broad even for such a long book, but he’s consistently engaging throughout, never more so than when he’s striking a subtly optimistic counterpoint to cultural and even religious doom and gloom (reminding readers, for instance, of the good work the much-maligned Catholic Church has done).
An overambitious but richly thought-provoking new interpretation of human history.Pub Date: Dec. 13, 2023
ISBN: 9781662937132
Page Count: 740
Publisher: Pingora Press
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
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Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.
A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting.
To call Elon Musk (b. 1971) “mercurial” is to undervalue the term; to call him a genius is incorrect. Instead, Musk has a gift for leveraging the genius of others in order to make things work. When they don’t, writes eminent biographer Isaacson, it’s because the notoriously headstrong Musk is so sure of himself that he charges ahead against the advice of others: “He does not like to share power.” In this sharp-edged biography, the author likens Musk to an earlier biographical subject, Steve Jobs. Given Musk’s recent political turn, born of the me-first libertarianism of the very rich, however, Henry Ford also comes to mind. What emerges clearly is that Musk, who may or may not have Asperger’s syndrome (“Empathy did not come naturally”), has nurtured several obsessions for years, apart from a passion for the letter X as both a brand and personal name. He firmly believes that “all requirements should be treated as recommendations”; that it is his destiny to make humankind a multi-planetary civilization through innovations in space travel; that government is generally an impediment and that “the thought police are gaining power”; and that “a maniacal sense of urgency” should guide his businesses. That need for speed has led to undeniable successes in beating schedules and competitors, but it has also wrought disaster: One of the most telling anecdotes in the book concerns Musk’s “demon mode” order to relocate thousands of Twitter servers from Sacramento to Portland at breakneck speed, which trashed big parts of the system for months. To judge by Isaacson’s account, that may have been by design, for Musk’s idea of creative destruction seems to mean mostly chaos.
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9781982181284
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
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