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NATURE, CULTURE, AND INEQUALITY
A COMPARATIVE AND HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
A readable introduction to Piketty’s worldview.
A review of global inequalities of income and wealth and the factors that might reduce them.
In this slim volume, based on a 2022 lecture at the Musée du Quai Branly—Jacques Chirac in Paris, the acclaimed French economist Piketty, best known for Capital in the Twenty-First Century, draws on previous research and writings to sketch his understanding of the political underpinnings of social and economic inequality and its variations historically and across countries. Although the data show a “tendency toward greater social equality” since the late 18th century, a slowing of that trend has occurred since the late 20th century. These movements are neither inevitable nor simply a matter of personal talents or economics. Rather, reductions in inequality directly relate to political culture and, specifically, collective political mobilizations that pressure national governments to institute progressive taxation, fund education open to all social groups, and encourage both participatory governance and worker involvement in corporate governance. In presenting his argument, Piketty includes historical material from France, Sweden, other parts of Western Europe, and the U.S., and he briefly comments on gender inequality, colonial and war debt, the rise of the welfare state, and climate change. Readers familiar with the author’s earlier work will find little that is new. The book is a synthesis, as Piketty meanders from topic to topic while only briefly digging into each. Moreover, contrary to the title, the author writes little about nature and culture. Regarding nature, Piketty points to the unequal global and class responsibility for carbon emissions and suggests, equivocally, that the problems of climate change eventually “may lead to a greater demand for equality than we’ve recently seen.” As for culture, it surfaces only as a way to differentiate political systems that harbor different clusters of individualistic and collective values.
A readable introduction to Piketty’s worldview.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2024
ISBN: 9781635424560
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Other Press
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2024
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THE AGE OF GRIEVANCE
A welcome call to grow up and cut out the whining.
The New York Times columnist serves up a cogent argument for shelving the grudge and sucking it up.
In 1976, Tom Wolfe described the “me decade” as a pit of mindless narcissism. A half century later, Bruni, author of Born Round and other bestselling books, calls for a renaming: “‘Me Turning Point’ would have been more accurate, because the period of time since has been a nonstop me jamboree.” Our present cultural situation, he notes, is marked by constant grievance and endless grasping. The ensuing blame game has its pros. Donald Trump, he notes, “became a victor by playing the victim, and his most impassioned oratory, such as it was, focused not on the good that he could do for others but on the bad supposedly done to him.” Bruni is an unabashed liberal, and while he places most of the worst behavior on the right—he opens with Sean Hannity’s bleating lie that the Biden administration was diverting scarce baby formula from needy Americans to illegal immigrants—he also allows that the left side of the aisle has committed its share of whining. A case in point: the silencing of a professor for showing an image of Mohammed to art students, neither religiously proscribed nor done without ample warning, but complained about by self-appointed student censors. Still, “not all grievances are created equal,” he writes. “There is January 6, 2021, and there is everything else. Attempts by leaders on the right to minimize what happened that day and lump it together with protests on the left are as ludicrous as they are dangerous.” Whether from left or right, Bruni calls for a dose of humility on the part of all: “an amalgam of kindness, openness, and silliness might be an effective solvent for grievance.”
A welcome call to grow up and cut out the whining.Pub Date: April 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781668016435
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 24, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024
UNCOMFORTABLE CONVERSATIONS WITH A JEW
An important dialogue at a fraught time, emphasizing mutual candor, curiosity, and respect.
Two bestselling authors engage in an enlightening back-and-forth about Jewishness and antisemitism.
Acho, author of Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man, and Tishby, author of Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth, discuss many of the searing issues for Jews today, delving into whether Jewishness is a religion, culture, ethnicity, or community—or all of the above. As Tishby points out, unlike in Christianity, one can be comfortably atheist and still be considered a Jew. She defines Judaism as a “big tent” religion with four main elements: religion, peoplehood, nationhood, and the idea of tikkun olam (“repairing the world through our actions”). She addresses candidly the hurtful stereotypes about Jews (that they are rich and powerful) that Acho grew up with in Dallas and how Jews internalize these antisemitic judgments. Moreover, Tishby notes, “it is literally impossible to be Jewish and not have any connection with Israel, and I’m not talking about borders or a dot on the map. Judaism…is an indigenous religion.” Acho wonders if one can legitimately criticize “Jewish people and their ideologies” without being antisemitic, and Tishby offers ways to check whether one’s criticism of Jews or Zionism is antisemitic or factually straightforward. The authors also touch on the deteriorating relationship between Black and Jewish Americans, despite their historically close alliance during the civil rights era. “As long as Jewish people get to benefit from appearing white while Black people have to suffer for being Black, there will always be resentment,” notes Acho. “Because the same thing that grants you all access—your skin color—is what grants us pain and punishment in perpetuity.” Finally, the authors underscore the importance of being mutual allies, and they conclude with helpful indexes on vernacular terms and customs.
An important dialogue at a fraught time, emphasizing mutual candor, curiosity, and respect.Pub Date: April 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781668057858
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Simon Element
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2024
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