Books & Media Reviews
HBO documentary about Sergio Viera de Mello airs May 2010, beginning May 6
September 7, 2012 This month, beginning May 6, HBO television will premiere its riveting documentary “Sergio” based on the book “Chasing the Flame” by Samantha Power about the Brazilian diplomat Sergio Vieira de Mello. The film includes notable interviews from refugee and aid exp...
Reviewed By: Steve Hansch
The Price of Inequality
Joseph E. Stiglitz’s new book, “The Price of Inequality,” is the single most comprehensive counterargument to both Democratic neoliberalism and Republican laissez-faire theories. While credible economists running the gamut from center right to center left describe our bleak present as the re...
Reviewed By: Thomaas B. Edsall
The Emergency State: America’s Pursuit of Absolute Security at all Costs
Last year a Newsweek article made public President Obama’s reading list. Its message was promising: A third of the books focused on former presidencies. Yet according to “The Emergency State,” David C. Unger’s ambitious and valuable overview of 20th-century presidents and national security, ...
Reviewed By: Karen J. Greenberg
Escape from Camp 14: One Man’s Remarkable Odyssey From North Korea to Freedom in the West
Escape From Camp 14: One Man’s Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West” by Blaine Harden...
Reviewed By: Andrew Salmon
Tinderbox : How the West Sparked the AIDS Epidemic and How the World Can Finally Overcome It
Just a few months ago, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, a leading firebrand of the global AIDS movement, Stephen Lewis, said at a conference that the money given to Africa by the U.S. global AIDS initiative called PEPFAR and by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria amounted to “partial ...
Reviewed By: John Donnelly
Behind the Beautiful Forevers
This is an astonishing book.eye view of the “undercity” of one of the world’s largest metropolises; as an intensely reported, deeply felt account of the lives, hopes and fears of people traditionally excluded from literate narratives; as a story that truly hasn’t been told before, at least n...
Reviewed By: Shashi Tharoor
World Development Report 2012: Gender Equality and Development
The 2012 World Development Report (WDR) is a watershed moment: it is the first time that the World Bank, the world’s largest and most influential development institution, has devoted its flagship publication to gender. Kate Bedford of the University of Kent argues that the report leaves the Bank f...
Reviewed By: Kate Bedford Bretton
Earth Grab: Geopiracy, the New Biomassters, and Capturing Climate Genes
January 11, 2012 Human induced climate change is rapidly becoming an environmental crisis unprecedented in scope. As the crisis takes hold, with examples such as increasingly unpredictable and destructive weather patterns, unrestrained deforestation, the disappearance of arctic ice, risi...
Reviewed By: Michael Abouzelof
The Justice Cascade: How Human Rights Prosecutions Are Changing World Politics
What is the impact of putting former national leaders on trial for massive violations of human rights? Surely, most who are aware of the crimes, and certainly the surviving victims, find value in the trials and convictions of murderous leaders and their associates. On the other hand, there are cases...
Reviewed By: Micheline Ishay
The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
Appearances often deceive. Steven Pinker’s “The Better Angels of Our Nature” landed on my desk in the immediate aftermath of that terrible massacre in Norway. As I read the book, Syrian forces slaughtered pro-democracy protesters, riots engulfed English cities, and murders punctuated the news....
Reviewed By: Gerard Degroot
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