An urgent and compelling report on the clear and present danger of proto-fascism in the U.S.
After becoming a victim of unhinged anti-Semitic hatred, trolled and cyberstalked by fringe-right bigots, a journalist delivers his forceful response.
Weisman (No. 4 Imperial Lane, 2015), the deputy Washington editor of the New York Times, once reported on the activities of a neoconservative, journalism that provoked alt-right activists on social media. Under the cover of “free speech,” they openly expressed their prejudice against Jews in general and the author in particular. Certainly, the author notes, anti-Semitism in the U.S. is hardly new. He recalls the lynching of Leo Frank, the bile spewed by Charles Lindbergh, and other examples. Erstwhile good feelings engendered during the civil rights movement eventually collapsed, and Judaism and its adherents became conflated with the State of Israel. Now, anti-Semitism is flourishing in the Trump era, and what was unacceptable once now swims in the mainstream. With reportorial skill, the author brings us up to date on activities of current hate groups and their leaders. The titular meme—three parentheses (“echoes”) around a proper noun—is a dog whistle signaling, for those attuned to it, “Jew.” Today, marchers in Nazi regalia parade, and swastikas and graffiti abound; harassment, trolling, and cyberstalking are essential tools in the alt-right kit. So what can be done? What should American Jews do? Weisman issues a call to arms in defense of truth. We must organize and fight, he urges, using the internet and social media. Jews, the “Other,” must ally with other Others like African-Americans and immigrants. The author also recommends toning down the obsession with Israel and supporting organizations like the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center. “The moral response is imperative,” writes Weisman. “Morality can inform tactics.” For now, though, the value of his brief text remains the light he shines on the current state of bigotry.
An urgent and compelling report on the clear and present danger of proto-fascism in the U.S.Pub Date: March 20, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-250-16993-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 27, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2017
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
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
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