Growing Inequality Is A Huge Problem, And

In His Fierce, Bold Determination To See The Lives Of Modern-day Slaves Up Close, Benjamin Skinner Reminds Me Of The British Abolitionist Of Two Hundred Years Ago, Zachary Macaulay, Who Once Traveled On A Slave Ship Across The Atlantic, Taking Notes. Skinner Goes Everywhere, From Border Crossings To Brothels To Bargaining Sessions With Dealers In Human Beings, To Bring Us This Vivid, Searing Account Of The Wide Network Of Human Trafficking And Servitude Which Spans Today's Globe.

Compared With How We've Ducked It In The United States, Canada Should Be Really Proud Of How You Have Welcomed A Significant Number Of Refugees - Far More, In Fact, Than We Americans Have, Even Though Our Population Is Vastly Larger.

Someday, I Have No Doubt, The Dead From Today's Wars Will Be Seen With A Similar Sense Of Sorrow At Needless Loss And Folly As Those Millions Of Men Who Lie In The Cemeteries Of France And Belgium - And Tens Of Millions Of Americans Will Feel A Similar Revulsion For The Politicians And Generals Who Were So Spendthrift With Others' Lives.

I Think Writers Can Respond By Writing About The Refugee Crisis, By Looking At Problems Faced By Migrants, By Trying Hard To Portray Them As The Human Beings That They Are.

How Many Really Great Writers Are There Who Are Totally Non-political? You Can Hear The French Revolution In The Poetry Of [percy Bysshe] Shelly And [john] Wordsworth; You Can Sense The Vast Inequalities Of Tsarist Russia In [anton] Chekhov And [lev] Tolstoy.