Accessible and urgent civic advice—hopefully, those who need it will pay attention.
The creator of the popular PoliticsGirl media brand weighs in on the countless problems with the U.S. government and political system and how to fix some of them.
Taking her cue from Thomas Paine, McGowan offers “Six American Principles” that offer Americans a way to free themselves from the tyranny of political dysfunction and rebuild a broken democracy. The first principle—America is the land of freedom—has undergirded the thinking of citizens and politicians for nearly 250 years. However, the author argues persuasively that some Americans, by virtue of race, class, and gender, are freer than others, and many of them actively use their power to oppress others. She traces the origins of this problem back to the white, land-owning, male framers and the documents they created as guidelines for the “American experiment.” To ratify the Constitution, they made allowances for slavery, granted smaller states equal power in the Senate, and counted African Americans as three-fifths of a person. If racism, inequality, political gridlock, and corruption have overwhelmed the body politic, it is because they grew out of these exclusions and exceptions. The other principles McGowan brings forward—for example, that everyone should have the opportunity to rise and that the law applies to every single citizen, regardless of status—will remain ideals for as long as these issues go unresolved. She further observes that adherence to long-standing political traditions, including lifetime appointments for Supreme Court justices, must be reconsidered, even if that means amending the Constitution, which the framers intended as a “living document” for a developing nation. For true change to happen, American citizens must put aside their complacency and vote while actively holding those in power accountable: “The question is: Are we willing to work for it?”
Accessible and urgent civic advice—hopefully, those who need it will pay attention.Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2024
ISBN: 9781668066430
Page Count: 240
Publisher: One Signal/Atria
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.
An Egyptian Canadian journalist writes searchingly of this time of war.
“Rules, conventions, morals, reality itself: all exist so long as their existence is convenient to the preservation of power.” So writes El Akkad, who goes on to state that one of the demands of modern power is that those subject to it must imagine that some group of people somewhere are not fully human. El Akkad’s pointed example is Gaza, the current destruction of which, he writes, is causing millions of people around the world to examine the supposedly rules-governed, democratic West and declare, “I want nothing to do with this.” El Akkad, author of the novel American War (2017), discerns hypocrisy and racism in the West’s defense of Ukraine and what he views as indifference toward the Palestinian people. No stranger to war zones himself—El Akkad was a correspondent in Afghanistan and Iraq—he writes with grim matter-of-factness about murdered children, famine, and the deliberate targeting of civilians. With no love for Zionism lost, he offers an equally harsh critique of Hamas, yet another one of the “entities obsessed with violence as an ethos, brutal in their treatment of minority groups who in their view should not exist, and self-decreed to be the true protectors of an entire religion.” Taking a global view, El Akkad, who lives in the U.S., finds almost every government and society wanting, and not least those, he says, that turn away and pretend not to know, behavior that we’ve seen before and that, in the spirit of his title, will one day be explained away until, in the end, it comes down to “a quiet unheard reckoning in the winter of life between the one who said nothing, did nothing, and their own soul.”
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593804148
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A hopeful civic sermon favoring inspiration over concrete prescriptions.
A New Jersey senator’s moral manifesto.
Booker situates his narrative in the wake of his 2025 record-breaking 25-hour stand on the Senate floor, an act of physical endurance and moral insistence that serves as its animating example. Though not framed as memoir, the episode implicitly positions Booker himself as a model of the virtues he argues are essential to democratic life. Organized around 10 qualities, including agency, vulnerability, truth, perseverance, and grace, the book advances a clear thesis. “In this book, I argue that many Americans who came before us, and many among us today, have consistently proven that virtues are practical: They expand our power, deepen our sense of belonging, and equip us to endure and ultimately prevail.” Booker illustrates this claim through figures such as the late U.S. Rep. John Lewis, whose willingness to endure sacrifice for principle anchors the book’s moral lineage, and Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, whose composure under public scrutiny is presented as an example of dignity as civic strength. These portraits reinforce Booker’s belief that character, sustained over time, can shape public life, even when political outcomes remain uncertain or incomplete. He supplements these examples with personal stories drawn from family, faith, and community, delivered with emotional conviction and a tone that remains affirming and carefully calibrated. Much of the narrative reads like an expansive commencement address, earnest and reassuring, offering moral affirmation at moments when readers might reasonably expect sharper confrontation. That rhetorical choice ultimately defines the book’s limits. Booker acknowledges political conflict and compromise, but rarely examines them in depth, and while urging leaders to take moral risks, he avoids sustained reflection on how some of his own political decisions have tested the virtues he promotes. The result is a principled but self-conscious work that affirms shared values while offering little guidance for navigating power and accountability.
A hopeful civic sermon favoring inspiration over concrete prescriptions.Pub Date: March 24, 2026
ISBN: 9781250436733
Page Count: 272
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: March 24, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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