Will please those who believe theocons to be the real dragon, rather than Dubya.
A former editor of the principal “theocon” journal First Things, now an apostate, warns that the religious zealotry of his one-time colleagues is a danger to American democracy.
The movement began shortly after the ’60s, says Linker, when some of the theocon (theologically conservative) architects—Michael Novak, George Weigel, Richard John Neuhaus—became disenchanted by the secularity of the causes they had initially supported (civil rights, Vietnam War opposition). These thinkers veered to the right, underpinning their political philosophy with conservative Roman Catholic theology. (Neuhaus, raised a Lutheran, was ordained a Catholic priest.) They crafted an alliance with Protestant conservatives and hoped that born-again Jimmy Carter would be their standard-bearer (he was not). They supported Ronald Reagan (though they were disappointed that he was divorced and rarely attended church), endured George H.W. Bush (who was uneasy around theocons), reviled Bill Clinton (and were stunned by his popularity throughout his impeachment trial), believed their prayers had been answered when George W. Bush was elected—twice. Although 9/11 changed the country’s focus from domestic to international issues, the theocons, Linker argues, twisted themselves into pretzels to support a first-strike war against a nation (Iraq) that had not attacked us. The author also takes us through the theocons’ involvement in (and reaction to) some current social issues and events—the Terry Schaivo case, stem-cell research, the Darwin debate, gay marriage and their central concern: abortion. Linker does not believe that the theocons are interested in a sort of Talibanized America (he makes this point a couple of times), but he does think they envision a sort of fantasy ’50s world in which men are in charge, women stay at home, gays go to therapy, everyone attends church on Sunday and Christian principles pervade the marketplace and the corridors of power. Linker’s text comprises much close reading of essays and books by the theocons—a strategy that may test some readers’ patience.
Will please those who believe theocons to be the real dragon, rather than Dubya.Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2006
ISBN: 0-385-51647-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2006
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
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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