Of great interest to policy wonks and would-be political analysts, perhaps less so for general readers.
Why we should heed the warnings of qualified experts and how the failure to do so in the past has led to avoidable disasters.
Bestselling nonfiction author and novelist Clarke (Pinnacle Event, 2015, etc.) worked as a counterterrorism adviser for Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton, but his warnings about the threat of an attack by al-Qaida were repeatedly ignored. Eddy, a former director of the National Security Council, is the CEO of Ergo, a global intelligence firm. As the authors demonstrate in a narrative that occasionally bogs down in figures and numerous bulleted sections, just as the Trojans failed to heed the warnings of a Greek attack by the mythical Princess Cassandra, the warnings of modern policy advisers are often ignored. Some of the major examples of the past century include the attack on Pearl Harbor, the devastating aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan. In current-day usage, the label is often attached to stock analysts who specialize in predicting the direction of the markets. The authors cite Meredith Whitney, “a young analyst at a mid-tier research house,” as a perfect example of a modern Cassandra in action. “Despite the bursting of the dot-com bubble between 1999 and 2001,” they write, “the stock market appeared to be as strong as ever.” But Whitney, shocked to discover that Citigroup, one of the world’s largest banks, was paying out more to investors than it was earning in profits, downgraded its rating, “the equivalent of a call to sell the stock.” In August 2008, Fortune described Whitney as “the woman who called Wall Street’s meltdown.” Further warnings by experts on a variety of issues—e.g., the growth of artificial intelligence or meteor strikes—are also being ignored. Clarke and Eddy suggest the need for a watchdog group to monitor threats and recommend appropriate responses.
Of great interest to policy wonks and would-be political analysts, perhaps less so for general readers.Pub Date: July 25, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-248802-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 8, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
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
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics,...
A provocative analysis of the parallels between Donald Trump’s ascent and the fall of other democracies.
Following the last presidential election, Levitsky (Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America, 2003, etc.) and Ziblatt (Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy, 2017, etc.), both professors of government at Harvard, wrote an op-ed column titled, “Is Donald Trump a Threat to Democracy?” The answer here is a resounding yes, though, as in that column, the authors underscore their belief that the crisis extends well beyond the power won by an outsider whom they consider a demagogue and a liar. “Donald Trump may have accelerated the process, but he didn’t cause it,” they write of the politics-as-warfare mentality. “The weakening of our democratic norms is rooted in extreme partisan polarization—one that extends beyond policy differences into an existential conflict over race and culture.” The authors fault the Republican establishment for failing to stand up to Trump, even if that meant electing his opponent, and they seem almost wistfully nostalgic for the days when power brokers in smoke-filled rooms kept candidacies restricted to a club whose members knew how to play by the rules. Those supporting the candidacy of Bernie Sanders might take as much issue with their prescriptions as Trump followers will. However, the comparisons they draw to how democratic populism paved the way toward tyranny in Peru, Venezuela, Chile, and elsewhere are chilling. Among the warning signs they highlight are the Republican Senate’s refusal to consider Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee as well as Trump’s demonization of political opponents, minorities, and the media. As disturbing as they find the dismantling of Democratic safeguards, Levitsky and Ziblatt suggest that “a broad opposition coalition would have important benefits,” though such a coalition would strike some as a move to the center, a return to politics as usual, and even a pragmatic betrayal of principles.
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics, rather than in the consensus it is not likely to build.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6293-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
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