Thoughtful considerations on the intersection of history, bigotry, folklore, and politics.
Dispatches from the harrowing resurgence of global antisemitism.
One theme that emerges in this well-curated collection of essays is that while antisemitism has become more visible in recent years, it has never ebbed. As Glanville writes, “the perception of Jews as a globally united group, operating clandestinely across borders, has survived as a formula to be applied in any era.” Photographer and writer Mikołaj Grynberg describes how Poland’s Jewish population has eroded due to pogroms, Communist-era edicts, and gag orders. It is illegal there to assert that Poland played a role in the Holocaust despite it being the site of the most infamous Nazi death camps. Writer and translator Natasha Lehrer discusses how France’s culture of “universalism” provides cover for antisemitic rhetoric. Novelist Olga Grjasnowa shows the pervasiveness of antisemitism in Germany, often fobbed off on Muslim immigrants but common among native Germans as well. All of this has a long history, as Glanville discusses in an essay on “blood libel” and persistent false accusations of Jews committing murder for religious rituals. As many of the contributors note, antisemites are newly emboldened by a global wave of populism spearheaded by Donald Trump, infecting not just QAnon conspiracy theorists, but legislators in the U.S., England, and other nations. That line of demonization has a long history, as well: Activist Jill Jacobs points out that in the 1940s people spread rumors of murderous Communist Jews massing at the Mexican border. Israeli journalist Tom Segev thoughtfully explores how this shift has changed politics within and around Israel, intensifying debates over distinctions between anti-Zionism and antisemitism. The subject merits a longer, more comprehensive study, but the variety of perspectives in this slim collection captures the emotional intensity of the subject and the urgent need to address it. The other contributors are Philip Spencer and Daniel Trilling.
Thoughtful considerations on the intersection of history, bigotry, folklore, and politics.Pub Date: Aug. 16, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-324-02065-3
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: June 14, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2022
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
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This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
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