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
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
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
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