The book has little news for anyone who’s been paying attention, but it’s a useful overview all the same.
A legal scholar examines disinformation as a go-to in the authoritarian toolbox.
Disinformation is ubiquitous and often laughably transparent, as when Trump brays about the 2020 election, but it works. As McQuade notes, two-thirds of Republicans believe that “the essential workings of democracy are corrupt, that made-up claims of fraud are true…and that violence is a legitimate response.” The Jan. 6 insurrection may just have been a practice run, but meanwhile the disinformation flows, abetted by election deniers who have been busily taking over state and local GOP branches and becoming overseers of future elections. McQuade examines several aspects of the playbook. One longtime Trump ploy is to paint his opponents with idiotic epithets such as “Sleepy Joe” and “Ron DeSanctimonious,” which “seem juvenile, but they serve the same manipulative purpose as other forms of disinformation.” The author doesn’t spare the media, which, she argues, has exaggerated its watchdog role to assume that government malfeasance and corruption are more widespread than the facts warrant, constantly hunting for the next scandal. Disinformation is a Clausewitzian war by other means, a way of dominating and diminishing opponents without violence, and it relies on constant lying. The current GOP dogma, for example, is not just that Trump won in 2020, but also that we live in a republic and not a democracy that demands that our leaders should make decisions for us, “providing cover for far-right values that are not shared by the majority of Americans.” McQuade’s handbook doesn’t add much to the literature on disinformation, but as a national security prosecutor, she’s well placed to liken what’s going on now to al-Qaeda’s mastery of digital media “to recruit and radicalize members with propaganda”—a thought guaranteed to trouble one’s sleep.
The book has little news for anyone who’s been paying attention, but it’s a useful overview all the same.Pub Date: Feb. 27, 2024
ISBN: 9781644213636
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Seven Stories
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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