A well-reasoned set of prescriptions for building a better future.
A Rules for Radicals for our time.
Atlantic staff writer Beckerman opens with one of the best known of Josef Stalin’s literary victims: the poet Osip Mandelstam, who composed a poem so dangerous that he did not write it down. Yet, once he had recited the poem to a few people, the authorities descended, asking what his purpose was in his composition: “He wrote it, he said, because he hated fascism, hated it more than anything else; it was as simple as that.” Well, it’s clear that fascism hasn’t gone away, and contesting it requires Mandelstam’s clarity—arrived at, Beckerman suggests, by addressing the question, “Can I live with myself?” That question, he adds, “is what makes a dissident a dissident,” someone whose beliefs accord with their actions. It’s not an easy thing to do or be: Having to make one’s own choices, to elect to be free, is harder work than having someone decide for you. Beckerman then offers a series of mantras, some of which might seem contradictory on the face: “Be Pessimistic” doesn’t immediately square with “Be Funny.” Yet, as he notes, pessimism doesn’t equate to fatalism (the resigned certainty that things not only can but will get worse), and the aim of being funny is to lampoon those in power (fascists being notoriously without a sense of humor). Beckerman also writes, pointedly, that fascists gain authority not simply by violence or the threat of it, but also by coopting culture—by, let’s just say, cowing comedians and placing fellow travelers at the helm of news programs. More, Beckerman makes an important distinction that’s worth remembering: The point of dissent is to insist on a society worth living in and a government worth living under, one that obeys its own laws—and to believe, if such things have been damaged beyond repair, “that you can always begin again.”
A well-reasoned set of prescriptions for building a better future.Pub Date: April 21, 2026
ISBN: 9798217089215
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
PERSPECTIVES
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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