A well-informed yet heavy, disturbing assessment of where we are now.
A pioneering social scientist examines the roots of social problems and sees dark days looming.
Everyone wants to know where the society in which they live is going, but answers are elusive. Turchin, an academic working in the emerging field of complexity science, believes he has found a path forward with a discipline called cliodynamics, which melds statistical analysis, social trend data, and historical comparisons to create a sophisticated model. He has written several books using cliodynamics, including Ultrasociety and Ages of Discord, and here, he aims to understand the current situation in the U.S, which he sees as sliding toward social and political disintegration. The author lays out a series of interlocking causes, such as the emergence of a class of overcredentialed people who want to join the upper class but find there is no room for them. Meanwhile, those on lower socio-economic rungs have seen a decline in their status and living standards, opening a vast gap in wealth distribution. As Turchin shows, when the equilibrium between ruling elites and the majority tips too far in favor of elites, political instability driven by extremists is nearly inevitable. This is intriguing material, but some crucial parts of the argument fail to connect, and the assertion that the U.S. is in a period of unprecedented turmoil might not be valid. Some would argue that the period between 1962 and 1975 was just as tumultuous, for example, but the core institutions proved durable, and stability eventually returned. This is not to make light of the deepening polarization that now defines politics but simply suggest that Turchin’s model may be less reliable than he asserts. Though the author explains his methodology in an appendix, questions remain. The text will be overly dense for general readers, but the author does have important things to say about power relationships and social evolution.
A well-informed yet heavy, disturbing assessment of where we are now.Pub Date: June 13, 2023
ISBN: 9780593490501
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2023
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
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
PERSPECTIVES
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