Next book

ON SETTLER COLONIALISM

IDEOLOGY, VIOLENCE, AND JUSTICE

A rigorous moral reckoning falters by leaving out half of the equation.

A poet and critic argues that an academic idea has alchemized into jet fuel for antisemitism.

In this slim, carefully argued book, Kirsch contends that the notion of settler colonialism is now a lethal ideology, drunk on its own violence. An editor at the Wall Street Journal, Kirsch says this danger burst into view in the widespread global response to Hamas’ slaughter of 1,200 Israeli Jews on Oct. 7, 2023. “In a time of terrible grief and anger, the ideas discussed here may seem abstract,” he writes, “but in the long term, nothing does more than our ideas to determine the ways we feel and act.” He describes a “frank enthusiasm for violence against Israeli civilians” in much of the current political discourse, asserting that “it’s impossible to understand progressive politics today without grasping the idea of settler colonialism and the worldview that derives from it.” Kirsch identifies its most famous construct, from Patrick Wolfe, a British-born Australian scholar. Wolfe wrote in 1968 that settler colonialism is enacted when “the colonizers came to stay—invasion is a structure not an event.” Scholars pointed this lens initially at Australia, Canada, and the United States. Kirsch sees land acknowledgments as one voguish thread. Others have critiqued land acknowledgments as toothless moral theater, appealing to American Puritanism. But when the settler colonialism lens is applied to Israel, the Jewish state is deemed to be illegitimate, outraging Jewish citizens who see these contested spaces as home. Such seemingly innocuous practices as land acknowledgments, Kirsch argues, lead to young people harassing their Jewish peers on college campuses. They “are not ashamed of themselves for the same reason that earlier generations were not ashamed to persecute and kill Jews—because they have been taught that it is an expression of virtue.” Kirsch, who often writes about Jewish ideas, believes there is “no true indigeneity.” He writes compellingly, laying out his arguments with the care of a poet. But by keeping his focus assiduously off of Israel’s lethal assault on Gaza—and the wider issue of Palestinian suffering—the author dilutes his case.

A rigorous moral reckoning falters by leaving out half of the equation.

Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2024

ISBN: 9781324105343

Page Count: 160

Publisher: Norton

Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2024

Next book

WAR

An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.

Documenting perilous times.

In his most recent behind-the-scenes account of political power and how it is wielded, Woodward synthesizes several narrative strands, from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel to the 2024 presidential campaign. Woodward’s clear, gripping storytelling benefits from his legendary access to prominent figures and a structure of propulsive chapters. The run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is tense (if occasionally repetitive), as a cast of geopolitical insiders try to divine Vladimir Putin’s intent: “Doubt among allies, the public and among Ukrainians meant valuable time and space for Putin to maneuver.” Against this backdrop, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham implores Donald Trump to run again, notwithstanding the former president’s denial of his 2020 defeat. This provides unwelcome distraction for President Biden, portrayed as a thoughtful, compassionate lifetime politico who could not outrace time, as demonstrated in the June 2024 debate. Throughout, Trump’s prevarications and his supporters’ cynicism provide an unsettling counterpoint to warnings provided by everyone from former Joint Chief of Staff Mark Milley to Vice President Kamala Harris, who calls a second Trump term a likely “death knell for American democracy.” The author’s ambitious scope shows him at the top of his capabilities. He concludes with these unsettling words: “Based on my reporting, Trump’s language and conduct has at times presented risks to national security—both during his presidency and afterward.”

An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.

Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024

ISBN: 9781668052273

Page Count: 448

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024

Next book

THE MESSAGE

A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.

Bearing witness to oppression.

Award-winning journalist and MacArthur Fellow Coates probes the narratives that shape our perception of the world through his reports on three journeys: to Dakar, Senegal, the last stop for Black Africans “before the genocide and rebirth of the Middle Passage”; to Chapin, South Carolina, where controversy erupted over a writing teacher’s use of Between the World and Me in class; and to Israel and Palestine, where he spent 10 days in a “Holy Land of barbed wire, settlers, and outrageous guns.” By addressing the essays to students in his writing workshop at Howard University in 2022, Coates makes a literary choice similar to the letter to his son that informed Between the World and Me; as in that book, the choice creates a sense of intimacy between writer and reader. Interweaving autobiography and reportage, Coates examines race, his identity as a Black American, and his role as a public intellectual. In Dakar, he is haunted by ghosts of his ancestors and “the shade of Niggerology,” a pseudoscientific narrative put forth to justify enslavement by portraying Blacks as inferior. In South Carolina, the 22-acre State House grounds, dotted with Confederate statues, continue to impart a narrative of white supremacy. His trip to the Middle East inspires the longest and most impassioned essay: “I don’t think I ever, in my life, felt the glare of racism burn stranger and more intense than in Israel,” he writes. In his complex analysis, he sees the trauma of the Holocaust playing a role in Israel’s tactics in the Middle East: “The wars against the Palestinians and their Arab allies were a kind of theater in which ‘weak Jews’ who went ‘like lambs to slaughter’ were supplanted by Israelis who would ‘fight back.’” Roiled by what he witnessed, Coates feels speechless, unable to adequately convey Palestinians’ agony; their reality “demands new messengers, tasked as we all are, with nothing less than saving the world.”

A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024

ISBN: 9780593230381

Page Count: 176

Publisher: One World/Random House

Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024

Close Quickview