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
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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