Book Review : COVID-19 and the Structural Crises of Our Time

Lim Mah-Hui and Michael Heng Siam-Heng, COVID-19 and the Structural Crises of Our Time, ISEAS Publishing, 2022, xxi+198 pages

For generations born after World War II, the COVID-19 pandemic is undoubtedly the greatest catastrophe they have encountered at a global scale; not unexpectedly, this led to a proliferation of studies, examining its impact on different aspects of human life. Mah-Hui and Siam-Heng’s book is a welcome addition to this growing literature, particularly because it takes a broad-based approach to ‘include problems in the financial, economic, social and political systems’ (p. 83). To be sure, this wideranging scope of the study is informed by a basic understanding that, ‘the foundational values of human society: dignity, integrity, kindness, liberty, social justice, equality, and compassion all serve towards the goal of human development in the fullest’ (p. 146); thus, close examination of different aspects of human society is warranted.