Next book

GRADUAL

THE CASE FOR INCREMENTAL CHANGE IN A RADICAL AGE

A calm, knowledgeable response to noisy radicalism.

While many current policy debates reward the loudest voice in the arena, this book sets out a different approach.

Berman and Fox have both had impressive careers in legal reform, often solving problems that once seemed intractable. In this collaboration, they examine the methodology of incremental change, emphasizing that they are drawing on a long tradition of political thinking and policymaking. Most of the great reforms in American society have not been “big bang solutions” but rather well-considered plans implemented over years. In the past decade, activists have moved to positions of demanding radical solutions to social problems, but Berman and Fox provide numerous examples of sudden changes that have gone disastrously wrong, mainly because they failed to understand the real needs of the people affected. The ingredients for good policy are honesty, humility, nuance, and respect, which includes accepting when a policy is failing and being willing to change. Incremental policies, unlike radical upheavals, can be assessed and corrected, as long as administrators are willing to do so. Berman and Fox note that successful, gradual policies often go unnoticed, even when they attain their goals. They point to the media, which prefers splashy announcements to steady improvements, as a culprit. This may be why Americans are so gloomy these days according to opinion polls: The media likes easy stories about problems rather than complex stories about achievements. Activists often scream about the need for urgent action, which makes an entertaining headline, even when a more meticulous approach would be more effective. Berman and Fox also dispute the idea that gradualism inherently supports the status quo, arguing that it is just the opposite. “Incrementalism is nothing less than the endless, ongoing effort to alleviate injustices,” they conclude. “It is a mindset. And it is our best hope for continuing to improve the world even in an age of radical rhetoric.”

A calm, knowledgeable response to noisy radicalism.

Pub Date: March 28, 2023

ISBN: 9780197637043

Page Count: 232

Publisher: Oxford Univ.

Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2022

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2022

Next book

A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES

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

Awards & Accolades

Likes

  • Readers Vote
  • 20


Our Verdict

  • Our Verdict
  • GET IT


  • Kirkus Reviews'
    Best Books Of 2020

Next book

BEYOND THE GENDER BINARY

From the Pocket Change Collective series

A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.

Awards & Accolades

Likes

  • Readers Vote
  • 20


Our Verdict

  • Our Verdict
  • GET IT


  • Kirkus Reviews'
    Best Books Of 2020

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

Close Quickview