A diffuse but sharp argument against the countless dangers of too much belief in the unproven and unseen.
Political analyst Sexton traces the current wave of know-nothing radicalization over centuries of world history.
By this occasionally wandering account, there’s a straight line between QAnon beliefs and the book of Revelation. One tenet of apocalypticism, writes the author, is that when they were in control of the narrative, “Christians believed they were engaged in an active and dire war against the literal personification of evil,” as opposed to the Jewish view of Satan as a metaphor. As such, evil people had to be dispatched, as when Charlemagne ordered the beheading of 4,500 Saxons who refused to convert to Christianity. The differences multiplied: Antisemitism flourished, Protestants hated Catholics and vice versa, and bizarre ideas became mainstream. For example, during the administration of Woodrow Wilson, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, updated to blame the communist revolution on a partnership between Bolsheviks and a ‘secret Jewish society’ working to ‘have the whole world…in their grip’ and destroy Christianity,” enjoyed broad circulation. Later, Henry Ford’s version of that strange screed became must reading for right-wingers, with the added layer that changes in baseball rules and jazz broadcast on the radio were instruments of Jewish mind control. It’s a small stretch to get from there to the belief that the basement of a pizza parlor was the locus for a pedophilia ring that only a Bible-worthy savior could oust given that “many Americans were primed to believe in anything, no matter how ridiculous or supernatural.” Thus Trump, Bannon, Orbán, and the like are ascendant or waiting for a new moment. “Forces are hard at work to try to rewind time and reinstall theocratic, authoritarian rule based on weaponized faiths that once ruled the world,” writes Sexton. Against this, he urges, it’s up to the reality-based community to combat the big lie and its many tentacles.
A diffuse but sharp argument against the countless dangers of too much belief in the unproven and unseen.Pub Date: Jan. 17, 2023
ISBN: 978-0-593-18523-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.
A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting.
To call Elon Musk (b. 1971) “mercurial” is to undervalue the term; to call him a genius is incorrect. Instead, Musk has a gift for leveraging the genius of others in order to make things work. When they don’t, writes eminent biographer Isaacson, it’s because the notoriously headstrong Musk is so sure of himself that he charges ahead against the advice of others: “He does not like to share power.” In this sharp-edged biography, the author likens Musk to an earlier biographical subject, Steve Jobs. Given Musk’s recent political turn, born of the me-first libertarianism of the very rich, however, Henry Ford also comes to mind. What emerges clearly is that Musk, who may or may not have Asperger’s syndrome (“Empathy did not come naturally”), has nurtured several obsessions for years, apart from a passion for the letter X as both a brand and personal name. He firmly believes that “all requirements should be treated as recommendations”; that it is his destiny to make humankind a multi-planetary civilization through innovations in space travel; that government is generally an impediment and that “the thought police are gaining power”; and that “a maniacal sense of urgency” should guide his businesses. That need for speed has led to undeniable successes in beating schedules and competitors, but it has also wrought disaster: One of the most telling anecdotes in the book concerns Musk’s “demon mode” order to relocate thousands of Twitter servers from Sacramento to Portland at breakneck speed, which trashed big parts of the system for months. To judge by Isaacson’s account, that may have been by design, for Musk’s idea of creative destruction seems to mean mostly chaos.
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9781982181284
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
