An insightful account of the glue that binds one of the dominant strains of conservatism and threatens liberal democracy.
A sociological study of gun sellers and the way their politics sustain gun rights as a defining element of American conservatism.
One of the consequences of the 2020 pandemic was a surge in gun sales—not just to the typical White, straight, conservative, male buyer, but also to women, racial and sexual minorities, and liberals. Carlson, professor of sociology at the University of Arizona, author of Policing the Second Amendment, and a 2022 MacArthur fellow, saw this as an opportunity to gauge “how American gun culture [is] defended as conservative terrain” and how gun sellers act as “merchants of conservative thought.” Interviewing 50 sellers from four states, the author chronicles their responses to the pandemic, the new buyers, and activist initiatives such as Black Lives Matter. Their thinking coalesces around three ideas: Owning a gun reinforces personal responsibility (armed individualism); behind all official stories and state action are “hidden power brokers” (conspiracism); and defining the boundaries of citizenship is a democratic necessity (extreme partisanship). This information allowed Carlson to group sellers into libertarians who cast individual rights as the “preferred remedy to social ills”; illiberal conservatives, who embrace democracy but narrow the concept of “the people” to those who share their beliefs (thereby excluding liberals); and eclectic conservatives, who balance individual rights with collective obligations. For each, defending gun rights is “a means of defining” democracy and protecting political rights. In contrast, Carlson favors a liberal democracy that is “consensus-based, justice-oriented, and equity-driven” and can assert political equanimity, civic grace, and awareness of shared vulnerability to bridge the current political divide. The author treats her subjects with respect and intellectual generosity, and her positioning of gun culture in democratic thought is a model of thoughtful scholarship.
An insightful account of the glue that binds one of the dominant strains of conservatism and threatens liberal democracy.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9780691230399
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Princeton Univ.
Review Posted Online: Jan. 25, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
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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