

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 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.

Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. 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. “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. Furthermore, like an accomplished crime reporter, the author recounts the story of how Rist was located and arrested by a local, female detective nearly 15 months after the break-in the trial, which features an unexpected twist and the fate of much of his booty.Ī superb tale about obsession, nature, and man’s “unrelenting desire to lay claim to its beauty, whatever the cost.” Throughout, Johnson’s flair for telling an engrossing story is, like the beautiful birds he describes, exquisite. These intriguing tales include that of Darwin rival Wallace’s extreme hardships trying to gather rare birds from around the world and losing many of them in a sinking ship the incredibly wealthy Lord Lionel Walter Rothschild’s museum at Tring, which his father built for him when he was 29 to house his extensive collection of animals and birds, alive and dead and the sad history of 19th-century women demanding the most exotic birds for their fashionable hats, which resulted in hundreds of millions of birds being killed. Johnson dove headfirst into a five-year journey “deep into the feather underground, a world of fanatical fly-tiers and plume peddlers, cokeheads and big game hunters, ex-detectives and shady dentists.” Everything the author touches in this thoroughly engaging true-crime tale turns to storytelling gold. The author became obsessed with the story of Edwin Rist, a young American flautist and expert tier of salmon flies, who, after performing at a June 2009 London concert, broke into the nearby British Natural History Museum at Tring to steal 299 rare bird skins, including 37 of naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace’s “beloved” Birds of Paradise. Journalist Johnson ( To Be a Friend Is Fatal: The Fight to Save the Iraqis America Left Behind, 2013) was fly-fishing in a New Mexico stream when he first heard about the “feather thief” from his guide. A captivating tale of beautiful, rare, priceless, and stolen feathers.
