Most helpful customer reviews
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Compassionate Reading, Nov 22 2005
Two things come across strongly in reading Race Against Time:
1) That Stephen Lewis is a deeply compassionate human being; and
2) That he is frustrated beyond his ability to tell. Lewis recounts personal experiences from the many hats he has worn in the United Nations, helping us to understand how things work at the international level - when it comes to aid and the Millenium Development Goals, SLOWLY. This is infuriating because not only are the promises made by the governments of developed countries inadequate, but they are not even being fulfilled. Lewis is unabashedly critical of the lack of adequate response; in particular with regard to the AIDS crisis - and it is a crisis - that is decimating Africa. Leiws' conversational style makes for quick and light reading about topics that are quite heavy. I would like to think that this book has helped to make me not only a more informed person, but a more compassionate one.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Mr. Lewis.....a truly Canadian hero, Dec 21 2005
By A Customer
Mr. Lewis' voice roars off the page, grabs the reader by the collar, and shakes the hell out of you. His compassion for and commitment to the AIDS-stricken African continent forces the reader to take action by contributing to his own foundation http://www.stephenlewisfoundation.org or to other such caring organizations as Doctors Without Borders.
At times frustrating and depressing, this series of lectures by the special UN envoy paints a grim picture of the pandemic of aids. However, Mr. Lewis stands out as a beacon for all who care about their fellow man, as Mr. D'Allaire did with his fine book, Shake Hands with the Devil.
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7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The world spends twenty times more money on weaponry..., May 31 2006
...while antiretroviral, preventative care, and medicinal treatments for HIV/AIDS receive less than a paltry fifty billion.
A trillion for weapons.
Fifty billion for HIV/AIDS.
The most astonishing thing about reading Stephen Lewis' book is not from the mass of appropriate statistics he presents on the scourge of the pandemic (as part of a Massey Lecture Series).
It's not in his eloquently- and convincingly-presented fulminations on the absolute futility of the global community to do anything of substance and efficacy in the face of the spread of HIV and AIDS.
It's not even in the cogent manner in which Lewis presents his views as part of his convincingly stepwise dialectic how to - at the very least! - make a small but significant dent in the growing cataclysm of HIV/AIDS.
No.
It's by way of a reveal from his recent last trip to Africa, to Zambia. In his own words, as he sat in front of a group of young women suckling their young, backed by a gathering of grandmothers, now co-opted into taking care of their young grandchildren and the children of others orphaned by HIV/AIDS.
As he describes it, he asks them where have their young men gone?
A hushed murmur descends upon the swelling mass. In this township - or illegal (unincorporated) settlement on the fringe of the capital Lusaka's cityscape, as in many other cities across this once-illustrious continent -- men (males, that is) hardly exist!
They've been murdered by the global community.
That's right, decimated by a global community which spends - to the ludicrous tune of a 20:1 ratio - more than one trillion dollars (!!!) on the international arms trade. Opposing this mighty industrial mass is a global humanitarian attempting to scrounge together (I was going to use the word 'cobble,' but your reaction will require something much sterner than that!) a mere fifty *billion* for Africa's AIDS-ravaged?!
Pathetic! Really.
Lewis sets out to shock, and shock you - dear reader - he mightily does.
As if the book's content weren't reason enough to buy it, I picked up Lewis' book because I respect the whole Lewis family tremendously. Presently comprised of Stephen, his columnist spouse Michelle Landsberg, their various children, including Canadian TV host, filmmaker, and activist Avi Lewis (of counterSpin fame), and his famous writer/activist wife Naomi Klein (of NO LOGO fame), plus their children.
They, as I, are Toronto, Canada natives. Essentially, it means we were all subjected to similar centrifugal forces that had and still swirl about these parts; perhaps from differing generational standpoints, yet all the same. What I'm trying to say is that it's nice to read how the growth of this big city hasn't dulled the sensibilities of my fellow cityfolk to the condition of others in dire need on the planet. Africa has remained at the front and centre of the Lewis agenda, despite the fact that Toronto's "earn/spend" ratrace has spiralled completely out of control in these fair Canadian climes.
I have certain criticisms of the book as well.
For one, I'd have liked Lewis to expand on these appropriately scathing comments to encompass a more detailed treatment of exactly *why* the continent of Africa appeals to him so much.
Okay, he does go into his youthful meanderings to some degree, somewhere around the middle, during the sixties. Heady times for the African continent. I've made a mental note - because of the colourful manner in which Lewis tells about these formerly newly-democratized African colonies - to look up several sources on the theme.
However, I do understand why Lewis' pickings have been slim in this regard. For one, it's his "position paper." This is a speaking series. There's no time for pie-in-the-sky reminiscences, since every minute of what he's on about counts. In the time I've taken to write this, and in the time you've taken read this, something *already* could have been done.
I'm also a little miffed how someone with as much experience as Lewis, how he's not able to supply strategems for the lowly "(wo)man on the street" to come to weigh with their own bodily (and other) contributions.
Again, I don't necessarily fault him for this either - RACE AGAINST TIME is precisely that. Lewis perhaps doesn't have the time - and this *shouldn't* be read with a hint of humour on my part - to waste on supplying the ones without the necessary financial means to come to the rescue. Nevertheless, if he ever considered a sequel to this - or, as Irshad Manji has done with her own site - he might perhaps provide a forum for those of us so inspired to weigh in.
Ideas all...
What frightens the hell out of this here reviewer is what the situation will be like within a mere decade to fifteen years. Lewis yanks down a dark shroud of reality. What is totally assured is that there will be even more deaths. There will be even more suffering. There will even be countless more numbers of orphans living without parents - and this is no pithy statement considering Africa's culture thrives on close family ties, unlike North America's.
The world will continue to make justifications for its financial and other inactions, and UN and other so-called humanitarian personnel agencies will continue to fence-sit and dilly-dally while more "arithmetic calculations" are being made about things like "prevalence rates," "natural rates of death and birth," and minuscule victories about the reduction of the spread of the disease.
All this without a single thing being done to back it up - nothing of substance, that is - for the ones who are already severely afflicted, by what this here reviewer claims is a curable affliction.
Ach, I'll just say it - the world doesn't give a hoot about Africans, nor their continent, nor their cultural offerings. With the expectation that our planet's population is set to balloon to nine BILLION souls by 2020, it's eerily understandable how the world might prefer to cull away at its swelling numbers on the most vulnerable continent: Africa.
Lewis didn't admit to this - and I can understand why. He's already in enough hot water as it is (he's an international rabble rouser, bless 'im), and in his own words he's only a "part-time envoy" of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. But I'll say it here for him.
It's sad.
It's tragic.
It's insane.
Read this book if only to wrest your comfortable self from the seemingly safe confines of your lifestyle. Thank goodness for men like Stephen Lewis. Men who aren't afraid to take a chance.
Anyone who's set foot in Africa will realize how precious a legacy it is...
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