Mixing inspiration and practical advice, this is a useful read for leaders at every level.
The president of the Rockefeller Foundation shows why big problems require big responses.
Often, the world’s problems seem too large and complicated to even describe, let alone overcome. Shah recognizes this sense of being overwhelmed, but he insists that finding a solution is always possible. The author’s experience is appropriate to his subject: He started his career at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where he played a central role in a massive program of vaccination in developing countries, and he went on to serve as the administrator for the United States Agency for International Development under Barack Obama. As the author notes, there was a debate about the most effective way to improve public health through philanthropic aid, but when the goal of vaccinating 900 million children was eventually set, everyone signed on. The key was to break down the problem into manageable segments, determining the crucial obstacles. Keeping the target firmly in mind reduced the danger of becoming bogged down in complexity. Reliable metrics were also necessary to gauge progress and identify problems with implementation. Shah took the methodology with him when he jumped into the head role of the Rockefeller Foundation. He had to gain the endorsement of heads of state and corporate leaders to provide financial backing, political support, and technical expertise. He guided a number of important projects to fruition, including a program to bring sustainable electricity to rural areas in India. While Shah underlines the critical role of experts in any “big bet” project, he also accepts that input from the community being affected is essential. He concludes each chapter with a distilled list of lessons, highlighting the importance of a clear purpose and firm strategy. His tone occasionally becomes a bit self-righteous, but in the end, he offers a lot of important information about getting from vision to outcome.
Mixing inspiration and practical advice, this is a useful read for leaders at every level.Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2023
ISBN: 9781668004388
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon Element
Review Posted Online: June 20, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2023
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.
Bearing witness to oppression.
Award-winning journalist and MacArthur Fellow Coates probes the narratives that shape our perception of the world through his reports on three journeys: to Dakar, Senegal, the last stop for Black Africans “before the genocide and rebirth of the Middle Passage”; to Chapin, South Carolina, where controversy erupted over a writing teacher’s use of Between the World and Me in class; and to Israel and Palestine, where he spent 10 days in a “Holy Land of barbed wire, settlers, and outrageous guns.” By addressing the essays to students in his writing workshop at Howard University in 2022, Coates makes a literary choice similar to the letter to his son that informed Between the World and Me; as in that book, the choice creates a sense of intimacy between writer and reader. Interweaving autobiography and reportage, Coates examines race, his identity as a Black American, and his role as a public intellectual. In Dakar, he is haunted by ghosts of his ancestors and “the shade of Niggerology,” a pseudoscientific narrative put forth to justify enslavement by portraying Blacks as inferior. In South Carolina, the 22-acre State House grounds, dotted with Confederate statues, continue to impart a narrative of white supremacy. His trip to the Middle East inspires the longest and most impassioned essay: “I don’t think I ever, in my life, felt the glare of racism burn stranger and more intense than in Israel,” he writes. In his complex analysis, he sees the trauma of the Holocaust playing a role in Israel’s tactics in the Middle East: “The wars against the Palestinians and their Arab allies were a kind of theater in which ‘weak Jews’ who went ‘like lambs to slaughter’ were supplanted by Israelis who would ‘fight back.’” Roiled by what he witnessed, Coates feels speechless, unable to adequately convey Palestinians’ agony; their reality “demands new messengers, tasked as we all are, with nothing less than saving the world.”
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9780593230381
Page Count: 176
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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