A refreshingly bold and candid voice.
A progressive political commentator offers his insights into the dysfunction that characterizes the modern Republican Party.
In his debut book, Cohen argues that the “Party of Lincoln” has been hijacked by “a burgeoning extremist faction for whom compromise is unacceptable and chaos is the goal.” Furthermore, “this reality is getting exponentially worse year after year—and as citizens, we are becoming dangerously numb to it.” The authoritarianism Republicans now represent threatens American democracy, and the assaults on decency and common sense, as made by the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene, pose grave dangers. Drawing on conversations with historians, constitutional scholars, former senators, attorneys, and Biden administration cabinet members, Cohen suggests that GOP dysfunction comes from a perverse desire to break—rather than reform—a government system they believe is too large to function well. Before Trump became the party’s “racist, misogynist, anti-everything narcissist” center of gravity and just after Obama’s 2008 election win, Republicans like Newt Gingrich were laying the groundwork for a strategy built on opposition for partisan gain. Others, like Mitch McConnell, would pursue that strategy relentlessly throughout both Obama’s and Biden’s tenures as president. At the same time, they transformed “human wrecking ball” Donald Trump into the GOP standard-bearer who gave them license to “openly court white supremacists and neo-Nazis, who now march proudly down our streets.” However dismal the current political landscape, Cohen still believes that the situation can be salvaged if Americans recognize the power of their own agency. Rather than take refuge in helplessness, the author suggests that citizens must not only continue to participate in democracy, but they must also actively persuade those who have lost faith—and who now constitute the margins on which modern "elections are won or lost"—to participate as well.
A refreshingly bold and candid voice.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2024
ISBN: 9780063392885
Page Count: 224
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
An incisive, urgently relevant analysis of—and call to action on—America’s foundational ideal.
An examination of how the U.S. can revitalize its commitment to freedom.
In this ambitious study, Snyder, author of On Tyranny, The Road to Unfreedom, and other books, explores how American freedom might be reconceived not simply in negative terms—as freedom from coercion, especially by the state—but positive ones: the freedom to develop our human potential within sustaining communal structures. The author blends extensive personal reflections on his own evolving understanding of liberty with definitions of the concept by a range of philosophers, historians, politicians, and social activists. Americans, he explains, often wrongly assume that freedom simply means the removal of some barrier: “An individual is free, we think, when the government is out of the way. Negative freedom is our common sense.” In his careful and impassioned description of the profound implications of this conceptual limitation, Snyder provides a compelling account of the circumstances necessary for the realization of positive freedom, along with a set of detailed recommendations for specific sociopolitical reforms and policy initiatives. “We have to see freedom as positive, as beginning from virtues, as shared among people, and as built into institutions,” he writes. The author argues that it’s absurd to think of government as the enemy of freedom; instead, we ought to reimagine how a strong government might focus on creating the appropriate conditions for human flourishing and genuine liberty. Another essential and overlooked element of freedom is the fostering of a culture of solidarity, in which an awareness of and concern for the disadvantaged becomes a guiding virtue. Particularly striking and persuasive are the sections devoted to eviscerating the false promises of libertarianism, exposing the brutal injustices of the nation’s penitentiaries, and documenting the wide-ranging pathologies that flow from a tax system favoring the ultrawealthy.
An incisive, urgently relevant analysis of—and call to action on—America’s foundational ideal.Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2024
ISBN: 9780593728727
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: June 25, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.
A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting.
To call Elon Musk (b. 1971) “mercurial” is to undervalue the term; to call him a genius is incorrect. Instead, Musk has a gift for leveraging the genius of others in order to make things work. When they don’t, writes eminent biographer Isaacson, it’s because the notoriously headstrong Musk is so sure of himself that he charges ahead against the advice of others: “He does not like to share power.” In this sharp-edged biography, the author likens Musk to an earlier biographical subject, Steve Jobs. Given Musk’s recent political turn, born of the me-first libertarianism of the very rich, however, Henry Ford also comes to mind. What emerges clearly is that Musk, who may or may not have Asperger’s syndrome (“Empathy did not come naturally”), has nurtured several obsessions for years, apart from a passion for the letter X as both a brand and personal name. He firmly believes that “all requirements should be treated as recommendations”; that it is his destiny to make humankind a multi-planetary civilization through innovations in space travel; that government is generally an impediment and that “the thought police are gaining power”; and that “a maniacal sense of urgency” should guide his businesses. That need for speed has led to undeniable successes in beating schedules and competitors, but it has also wrought disaster: One of the most telling anecdotes in the book concerns Musk’s “demon mode” order to relocate thousands of Twitter servers from Sacramento to Portland at breakneck speed, which trashed big parts of the system for months. To judge by Isaacson’s account, that may have been by design, for Musk’s idea of creative destruction seems to mean mostly chaos.
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9781982181284
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
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