A thought-provoking book sure to cause heated debate in discussions of equity and social justice.
A social justice activist and self-described “rich white man” serves up ideas about breaking the class stranglehold on the American polity.
“It turns out that racist thinking is common among white people,” writes Neiman, who opens by noting that the U.S. is racially and socio-economically segregated in astonishingly entrenched ways. The former CEO of a nonprofit devoted to placing students of color from “high-poverty” areas in colleges, the author writes about a seemingly sympathetic executive who, while putatively a “good” billionaire, revealed his view that such students were noncompetitive for ingrained reasons of culture. Meanwhile, by Neiman’s account, the executive was a prime example of the rich, White, male class that holds disproportionate political and economic power and expresses its views in unmistakably self-serving ways—e.g., by preparing to transfer $36 trillion in intergenerational wealth to their offspring, who aren’t as likely to put those dollars to work solving social problems. Neiman paints with a wide brush, but interestingly, he applies notions of intersectionality not just to the oppressed, but also to the oppressors. “Compounding unearned advantage says nothing about how hard any individual works or the quality of their choices,” he writes. “Rather, it simply acknowledges that those who benefit from unearned advantages receive a premium on their positive efforts and a discount on their missteps.” Neiman shows how wealth can be leveraged differently to dismantle social and economic inequalities and create a more equitable society. He uses the example of Prince Harry, who walked away from “the power and prestige that was his birthright as being in his own self-interest.” Harry, of course, remains rich and White all the same, but Neiman’s larger point is that “each generation gets to decide for itself what it means to be good,” including the prospect of giving up some of its loot.
A thought-provoking book sure to cause heated debate in discussions of equity and social justice.Pub Date: June 20, 2023
ISBN: 9780306925566
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Legacy Lit/Hachette
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2023
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.
Documenting perilous times.
In his most recent behind-the-scenes account of political power and how it is wielded, Woodward synthesizes several narrative strands, from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel to the 2024 presidential campaign. Woodward’s clear, gripping storytelling benefits from his legendary access to prominent figures and a structure of propulsive chapters. The run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is tense (if occasionally repetitive), as a cast of geopolitical insiders try to divine Vladimir Putin’s intent: “Doubt among allies, the public and among Ukrainians meant valuable time and space for Putin to maneuver.” Against this backdrop, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham implores Donald Trump to run again, notwithstanding the former president’s denial of his 2020 defeat. This provides unwelcome distraction for President Biden, portrayed as a thoughtful, compassionate lifetime politico who could not outrace time, as demonstrated in the June 2024 debate. Throughout, Trump’s prevarications and his supporters’ cynicism provide an unsettling counterpoint to warnings provided by everyone from former Joint Chief of Staff Mark Milley to Vice President Kamala Harris, who calls a second Trump term a likely “death knell for American democracy.” The author’s ambitious scope shows him at the top of his capabilities. He concludes with these unsettling words: “Based on my reporting, Trump’s language and conduct has at times presented risks to national security—both during his presidency and afterward.”
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781668052273
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
IN THE NEWS
PERSPECTIVES
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.
Bearing witness to oppression.
Award-winning journalist and MacArthur Fellow Coates probes the narratives that shape our perception of the world through his reports on three journeys: to Dakar, Senegal, the last stop for Black Africans “before the genocide and rebirth of the Middle Passage”; to Chapin, South Carolina, where controversy erupted over a writing teacher’s use of Between the World and Me in class; and to Israel and Palestine, where he spent 10 days in a “Holy Land of barbed wire, settlers, and outrageous guns.” By addressing the essays to students in his writing workshop at Howard University in 2022, Coates makes a literary choice similar to the letter to his son that informed Between the World and Me; as in that book, the choice creates a sense of intimacy between writer and reader. Interweaving autobiography and reportage, Coates examines race, his identity as a Black American, and his role as a public intellectual. In Dakar, he is haunted by ghosts of his ancestors and “the shade of Niggerology,” a pseudoscientific narrative put forth to justify enslavement by portraying Blacks as inferior. In South Carolina, the 22-acre State House grounds, dotted with Confederate statues, continue to impart a narrative of white supremacy. His trip to the Middle East inspires the longest and most impassioned essay: “I don’t think I ever, in my life, felt the glare of racism burn stranger and more intense than in Israel,” he writes. In his complex analysis, he sees the trauma of the Holocaust playing a role in Israel’s tactics in the Middle East: “The wars against the Palestinians and their Arab allies were a kind of theater in which ‘weak Jews’ who went ‘like lambs to slaughter’ were supplanted by Israelis who would ‘fight back.’” Roiled by what he witnessed, Coates feels speechless, unable to adequately convey Palestinians’ agony; their reality “demands new messengers, tasked as we all are, with nothing less than saving the world.”
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9780593230381
Page Count: 176
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
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