A provocative book that will make readers more aware of terrible things done in their names.
A probing investigation of the morally ambiguous tasks that are done with our tacit consent.
Press opens by recounting the story of sociologist Everett Hughes, who visited Germany soon after the end of World War II and encountered professionals who, while repudiating Nazism, also quietly noted that there was a “Jewish problem” that simply met the wrong solution. Hughes returned from the conversation with the idea that the Nazis were enabled by an “unconscious mandate” from German society. From this, Press builds a case that enfolds the “dirty work” conducted by our contemporary mandate—not the grimy work of mechanics and garbage collectors, but instead that of drone operators, prison guards and staff, and meat packers. All of these, writes the author, were considered “essential workers” during the pandemic, if low-paid ones and often without health care benefits, paid leave, and protection from the virus. In the case of the slaughterhouse workers—overwhelmingly members of ethnic minorities and often in the country illegally—the plants in which they labored were “ordered to stay open even as scores of laborers died and tens of thousands fell ill.” Slaughterhouses—and prisons and drone facilities—are tucked away in mostly poor, mostly minority communities to keep them from troubling the consciences of the more privileged. Most of these people would rather be doing something else, of course. The prison workers Press profiles, for instance, are inclined to settle their own consciences via liberal self-medication of drugs and alcohol, and they suffer suicide rates far higher than those in the general population. All this dirty work, Press writes, is enabled by “passive democrats” who are perfectly content not to know about the unpleasant details of jobs done on their behalf. He closes his account, meaningfully, with a ceremony at a VA hospital in which soldiers confess their “moral transgressions” while civilians acknowledge, “We share responsibility with you.”
A provocative book that will make readers more aware of terrible things done in their names.Pub Date: Aug. 17, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-374-14018-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.
An Egyptian Canadian journalist writes searchingly of this time of war.
“Rules, conventions, morals, reality itself: all exist so long as their existence is convenient to the preservation of power.” So writes El Akkad, who goes on to state that one of the demands of modern power is that those subject to it must imagine that some group of people somewhere are not fully human. El Akkad’s pointed example is Gaza, the current destruction of which, he writes, is causing millions of people around the world to examine the supposedly rules-governed, democratic West and declare, “I want nothing to do with this.” El Akkad, author of the novel American War (2017), discerns hypocrisy and racism in the West’s defense of Ukraine and what he views as indifference toward the Palestinian people. No stranger to war zones himself—El Akkad was a correspondent in Afghanistan and Iraq—he writes with grim matter-of-factness about murdered children, famine, and the deliberate targeting of civilians. With no love for Zionism lost, he offers an equally harsh critique of Hamas, yet another one of the “entities obsessed with violence as an ethos, brutal in their treatment of minority groups who in their view should not exist, and self-decreed to be the true protectors of an entire religion.” Taking a global view, El Akkad, who lives in the U.S., finds almost every government and society wanting, and not least those, he says, that turn away and pretend not to know, behavior that we’ve seen before and that, in the spirit of his title, will one day be explained away until, in the end, it comes down to “a quiet unheard reckoning in the winter of life between the one who said nothing, did nothing, and their own soul.”
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593804148
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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