A didactic tour de force presented approachably.
A leading scholar of Judaism explores just about every manifestation of contemporary anti-Semitism, with plenty of history included for context.
Lipstadt (Modern Jewish History and Holocaust Studies/Emory Univ.; Holocaust: An American Understanding, 2016, etc.), a winner of the National Jewish Book Award, relates the grim reality of anti-Semitism through an unusual format: an invented correspondence between herself and two fictional characters, one a brainy Jewish university student named Abigail, the other a non-Jewish university law professor deeply worried about pervasive hatred of Jews on campus and elsewhere. The epistolary structure is unvarying, so some readers may find it artificial and tiresome—but as the information in each piece of correspondence builds on the previous letters, a coherent and frightening narrative begins to take shape. Lipstadt personalizes the book by citing anti-Semitic issues she has faced. Even after devoting most of her career to the study of the Shoah, she writes, she had a very difficult time piecing this book together. Writing about the depressing present and dark-looking future caused her unexpected anguish. As part of the correspondence driving the narrative, the author defines anti-Semitism, offers a five-pronged taxonomy of hatred, provides contextual explanations such as the similarities and differences between Jews and blacks as targets of hatred, delves into non-Jews who rationalize their evil ways, examines the phenomenon of Holocaust denial, and looks at anti-Semitism on college campuses. Another noticeable element throughout the book is the conundrum of Israel as a special land created to safeguard Jews. The author and her two composite correspondents wrestle with the Israeli-Palestinian hostilities, including what could and should be done to achieve de-escalation in the region. Lipstadt closes the book on a somewhat upbeat note by explaining how and why Jews should reject being cast as victims and nothing more. “You will encounter antisemitism along the way,” she writes, “but I entreat you to avoid letting this ‘longest hatred’ become the linchpin of your identity.”
A didactic tour de force presented approachably.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-8052-4337-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Schocken
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
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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