A useful study of how the once-powerful NeverTrumpers sank into insignificance.
Requiem for the GOP’s anti-Trump movement.
Traditionally, the Republican Party in the U.S. espoused such conservative ideas as low taxes, limited government, a reliance on civil society, and a morality-based foreign policy. Then Donald Trump joined the race for president. At first, the Republican elite considered him a bottom-feeding con man who would soon be laughed off the stage. Instead, his popularity grew, and the party’s stalwarts formed a NeverTrump movement (as it is referred to throughout the narrative) to combat his rise. As political science professors Saldin and Teles demonstrate, they openly did everything they could to stop him, but the people who vote Republican nominated him anyway, and the NeverTrump effort began to crumble. A trickle of NeverTrumpers switching sides to Trump soon became a flood, and their work had given Trump a long list of enemies, which essentially eliminated virtually all experienced officials from even being considered for any government post. That left Trump with no choice but to name inexperienced, incompetent people to high government positions, which he did. In this scholarly, occasionally wonkish, but always readable and deeply insightful book, the authors, both of whom have written extensively about American public policy and legal and economic matters, describe the story of NeverTrump’s demise by focusing on four specific groups: national security professionals, who are the experts involved with foreign policy; political operatives, such as pollsters and fundraisers, who provide services to the party and its candidates; professional public intellectuals, such as think tank members, columnists and authors; and lawyers and economists. After clearly laying out how Trump has proceeded to exploit his power over anyone who would challenge him, the authors conclude that someday, both extremes will have to share power with a liberal-conservative faction grounded in free trade, pluralism, and constitutionalism.
A useful study of how the once-powerful NeverTrumpers sank into insignificance.Pub Date: May 11, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-19-088044-6
Page Count: 232
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
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
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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