A timely, useful study of how the new reality of a “post-Washington Europe” may revive old demons of nationalism.
A snapshot of European capitals frozen amid turmoil, from Berlin to Athens.
What former Washington Post chief European correspondent Drozdiak sees as the noble European experiment of a united democratic order since the end of the Cold War—undergirded by the three initiatives of the expansion of NATO, the creation of the euro, and passport-free travel within Europe—seems now to be imploding from within. What happened? A revanchist, nationalist stance has emerged in many countries, a North-South split due to Germany’s economic predominance versus the south’s debt-heavy load, and the influx of refugees from Africa and the Middle East are challenging the social and economic order. Indeed, the fracturing has already occurred with Britain’s stunning vote to leave the European Union after more than four decades of membership. Drozdiak cites “scare tactics about unchecked immigration” as being a major reason, compounded by an “antiglobalization backlash.” In France, growing class conflict led to the rise of Marine Le Pen’s far-right party, which underscores the need “to restore respect for law and order, curtail Muslim immigration, and revive French national identity.” These themes continue to play out in other capitals. Angela Merkel’s bold decision to open Germany’s borders to refugees led to enormous criticism, while overall, Europe is feeling helpless to halt the influx as well as impotent to restrain Russia’s territorial aggression in Ukraine and elsewhere. In Spain, unemployment is very real, especially among young people; the country suffered through a crippling economic recession, while the “Catalan question” has taken on new strength. Hungary has erected wire fences along its border to obstruct refugee crossings, and Matteo Renzi, Italy’s youngest-ever center-left prime minister, boldly stood up to challenge Merkel’s austerity programs. Drozdiak pursues policies in Warsaw, Copenhagen, Riga, and Ankara, and he explores how Europe must deal with Moscow’s “traditional paranoia about being encircled by the West.”
A timely, useful study of how the new reality of a “post-Washington Europe” may revive old demons of nationalism.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-393-60868-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: July 2, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
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
SEEN & HEARD
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