An intriguing window into Republican primary politics.
Spurlino shares lessons learned from an unsuccessful congressional bid in this debut political memoir.
As the old adage goes, failure is a better teacher than success. That’s the premise of this memoir by a businessman who ran for Congress in 2016. “I lost,” writes Spurlino in his introduction. “I didn’t lose in the general election. I lost in the Republican primary. I finished fourth, receiving only 7 percent of the vote. That’s not the typical profile of someone who writes a book about politics.” Even so, his frontline perspective offers insight into the modern American political campaign: who runs for office, how and why they run, how they win, and—more often—how they lose. The author decided to throw his hat into the ring after learning that his congressman, Speaker of the House John Boehner, had announced his retirement. He then began the strange, sometimes comical process of hiring a campaign team, staking out official positions on major issues (many of them more conservative than his actual beliefs), paying someone to perform opposition research on himself, filming an announcement video, and drumming up political support. Spurlino’s insider’s view convinced him that the American campaign system needs profound changes, both in laws governing elections and in the culture of party politics. Spurlino’s prose is conversational and direct, and his persona is often that of a naïve Everyman learning about politics in real time, which sometimes makes for amusing reading: “I was a little surprised that Israel would be a campaign issue,” he writes; but later he found out that the other candidates likely wouldn’t be attending an upcoming event organized by pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC and that his presence there could win him some votes: “And with that, I officially became a supporter of AIPAC and Israel.” Spurlino’s after-the-fact suggestions for improving the political system—including ranked-choice voting—will likely divide his readership. The book’s greatest value is the way in which it charts the Trump-ification of the Republican Party over the course of 2016.
An intriguing window into Republican primary politics.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-63755-236-0
Page Count: 296
Publisher: RealClear Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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