This debut collaboration from journalists Knoedelseder (Stiffed, 1993) and Freedman is a comprehensive portrait of the horrific teen-mob murder of Philadelphia youth Eddie Polec and its aftermath, portraying the Polecs— grief and recovery against a complex tapestry of urban issues with acuity and sensitivity. Polec’s murder was shocking by any measure of modern mayhem. A gang of teens from neighboring Abington, responding to disrespect from Fox Chase kids, hunted down the ill-starred bystander and methodically beat him to death with baseball bats. The tragedy became national news following the revelation that the city’s beleaguered 911 system had logged dozens of calls during the melee which were handled ineptly or rudely during a crucial 40-minute period that might have saved Polec’s life. Opposing factions within a tumultuous city were soon involved, including Mayor Rendell and the operators— union; though the principal suspects were quickly arrested, the case threatened to descend into urban sideshow dissonance. The authors wisely focus on the trauma suffered by the Polec family, and their bravery in rising above it. Their approach lends grace to a decidedly wrenching subject. Especially compelling is the tale of John Polec, an average man suddenly thrust under scrutiny, who channels his grief into exhortations against extralegal retribution and efforts to compel the city towards meaningful reform of 911 procedures and technology (ultimately achieved only after the threat of a lawsuit). Finally, the book’s finely tuned emotional nuance cloaks a gripping courtroom drama, in which a galvanized prosecutor must contend with a skilled criminal defense team that has few scruples in confounding evidence of heinous culpability. In a disquieting coda, six perpetrators are convicted of third-degree murder and lesser crimes; the book avoids speculation regarding their youthful embrace of evil, an omission that darkens an otherwise tonic narrative. Still, this incisive portrayal of the Polec murder and Philadelphia’s 911 crisis provides a sobering account of personal tragedy as the crucible of social change. (8 pages b&w photos)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-571-19924-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Faber & Faber/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2000
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics,...
A provocative analysis of the parallels between Donald Trump’s ascent and the fall of other democracies.
Following the last presidential election, Levitsky (Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America, 2003, etc.) and Ziblatt (Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy, 2017, etc.), both professors of government at Harvard, wrote an op-ed column titled, “Is Donald Trump a Threat to Democracy?” The answer here is a resounding yes, though, as in that column, the authors underscore their belief that the crisis extends well beyond the power won by an outsider whom they consider a demagogue and a liar. “Donald Trump may have accelerated the process, but he didn’t cause it,” they write of the politics-as-warfare mentality. “The weakening of our democratic norms is rooted in extreme partisan polarization—one that extends beyond policy differences into an existential conflict over race and culture.” The authors fault the Republican establishment for failing to stand up to Trump, even if that meant electing his opponent, and they seem almost wistfully nostalgic for the days when power brokers in smoke-filled rooms kept candidacies restricted to a club whose members knew how to play by the rules. Those supporting the candidacy of Bernie Sanders might take as much issue with their prescriptions as Trump followers will. However, the comparisons they draw to how democratic populism paved the way toward tyranny in Peru, Venezuela, Chile, and elsewhere are chilling. Among the warning signs they highlight are the Republican Senate’s refusal to consider Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee as well as Trump’s demonization of political opponents, minorities, and the media. As disturbing as they find the dismantling of Democratic safeguards, Levitsky and Ziblatt suggest that “a broad opposition coalition would have important benefits,” though such a coalition would strike some as a move to the center, a return to politics as usual, and even a pragmatic betrayal of principles.
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics, rather than in the consensus it is not likely to build.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6293-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
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