Emanuel has his detractors—who doesn’t?—but he shines a compelling spotlight on that most elusive of ideals: hope.
The former two-term mayor of Chicago (2011-2019) and chief of staff for Barack Obama pens an eloquent tribute to the potential benefits of mayoral influence.
Given his long history of public service, Emanuel (co-author: The Plan: Big Ideas for America, 2006), now a contributor to the Atlantic, could have penned a traditional memoir; instead, he focuses on duty and service rather than his own track record. The book is part memoir, part sociological study, and part road map to readers who may aspire to political office in the future. In these deeply partisan times characterized by widespread gridlock at the federal level, Emanuel argues that mayoral power, even if used via the “bully pulpit,” can be more effective than the federal institutions that have failed in even their most basic responsibilities to their constituents. Sure, the author takes a few swipes at Donald Trump, noting that he dislikes cities because they represent qualities that he lacks: “They are progressive, smart, dynamic, inclusive, climate-aware, healthy, innovative and diverse, among other things.” However, the narrative is far from a political screed and more of a manifesto about how communities can take care of themselves by concentrating efforts on the local level. After a brief history of mayoral influence in the United States, Emanuel offers microportraits of mayors who are changing their communities for the good worldwide, including Pete Buttigieg (South Bend, Indiana), Mick Cornett (Oklahoma City), and Sadiq Khan (London), as well as leaders in New Orleans, Houston, and Milwaukee. These men and women continue to meet their challenges head-on and seek solutions through innovation, partnerships, and civic cooperation. While it’s true that most of the featured leaders are left-leaning progressives, the author also dedicates a chapter to fiscally and socially conservative mayors who are doing their jobs well.
Emanuel has his detractors—who doesn’t?—but he shines a compelling spotlight on that most elusive of ideals: hope.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-525-65638-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
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
BOOK REVIEW
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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