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SWEET CHARITY?

EMERGENCY FOOD AND THE END OF ENTITLEMENT

A magnificent work of engaged scholarship analyzing hunger in modern America and the private and public responses to it. Poppendieck (Sociology/Hunter Coll.; Breadlines Knee Deep in Wheat, not reviewed) deals here with the seeming paradox that “poverty grows deeper as our charitable responses to it multiply.” Amid the myriad problems of the poor, we have chosen as a society to focus on hunger. Private, volunteer responses have been vigorous and grown exponentially; today there are tens of thousands of food programs in the US, sponsored by organizations as diverse as the Boy Scouts, postal workers, religious institutions, and credit card companies. Clearly, we care, and Poppendieck does nothing to question the sincerity of such efforts, only their efficacy. She finds we have retreated to charity rather than confront the fundamental causes of hunger and poverty. Growing job insecurity in a time of globalizing and downsizing, reductions in the purchasing power of minimum wage and public assistance, and—most especially, for the author—the unrelenting attack on programs and entitlements for the poor, have created an inequality in the US greater than at any time since WWII. Volunteer food programs thus attack only a symptom of poverty and at the same time contribute to this poverty. They do so by allowing us to focus our energy on immediate need; they sap the energy of activists who might otherwise devote more of their time to advocacy efforts on behalf of the poor. Finally, such food programs let government off the hook, allowing it to ignore its responsibility to foster a more just and equitable society. The author examines all of these themes in detail through documentary research but also through “participant observation.” She works in soup kitchens and food banks. She interviews food recipients in their homes and neighborhoods. She brings to life the interactions of giver and receiver, creating a stunning tableau of kindness and desperation. The most important book on hunger and poverty in America since Michael Harrington’s The Other America (1964).

Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1998

ISBN: 0-670-88020-5

Page Count: 340

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1998

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WHEN BREATH BECOMES AIR

A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...

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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

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GOOD ECONOMICS FOR HARD TIMES

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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