Evenhanded, ideologically consistent, and guaranteed to generate a slew of angry tweets should a copy land at the White...
The conservative stalwart takes measure of the current administration and finds it sadly wanting—and dangerous, and immoral, and….
Atlantic senior editor Frum (Comeback: Conservatism That Can Win Again, 2007, etc.) finds the Trump White House pointed evidence of declining faith in democracy. However, the thing to worry about, he writes, “is not the bold overthrow of the Constitution, but the stealthy paralysis of governance” and complete disregard for the “rules of the game” on which constitutional democracy is founded. Clearly, the author holds Trump in contempt; just as plainly, he gives Trump credit for the political cunning that enabled him to leverage such things as the birther hoax to capture a sizable segment of an embittered, angry populace. What bothers Frum is less the specter of a buffoonish bully than the acquiescence of the Republican Party. He writes, “the most radical attack on American norms of governance in his first year was attempted not by Steve Bannon, Jeff Sessions, Anthony Scaramucci, or any other late-night demon figure, but by the regular Republicans of the House and Senate.” The author goes on to reckon with a host of factors that led to the current debacle, from racial tension and economic insecurity to the self-interested demands of baby boomers and the unholy wedding of the institutional GOP to a president who is, by all evidence, creating a third party. Against all this, refreshingly, Frum finds hope that the Trump administration will be remembered “as the end of something bad, and not the beginning of something worse.” In support of this qualified optimism, he notes that even as Trump continues to occupy the White House, other bullies and abusers have toppled, while the left has come to have a newfound appreciation of national security and elements of the right are accepting that government can, in fact, be a force for good.
Evenhanded, ideologically consistent, and guaranteed to generate a slew of angry tweets should a copy land at the White House.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-279673-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Nov. 13, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
