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 top-notch political memoir and serious exercise in practical politics for every reader.
In the first volume of his presidential memoir, Obama recounts the hard path to the White House.
In this long, often surprisingly candid narrative, Obama depicts a callow youth spent playing basketball and “getting loaded,” his early reading of difficult authors serving as a way to impress coed classmates. (“As a strategy for picking up girls, my pseudo-intellectualism proved mostly worthless,” he admits.) Yet seriousness did come to him in time and, with it, the conviction that America could live up to its stated aspirations. His early political role as an Illinois state senator, itself an unlikely victory, was not big enough to contain Obama’s early ambition, nor was his term as U.S. Senator. Only the presidency would do, a path he painstakingly carved out, vote by vote and speech by careful speech. As he writes, “By nature I’m a deliberate speaker, which, by the standards of presidential candidates, helped keep my gaffe quotient relatively low.” The author speaks freely about the many obstacles of the race—not just the question of race and racism itself, but also the rise, with “potent disruptor” Sarah Palin, of a know-nothingism that would manifest itself in an obdurate, ideologically driven Republican legislature. Not to mention the meddlings of Donald Trump, who turns up in this volume for his idiotic “birther” campaign while simultaneously fishing for a contract to build “a beautiful ballroom” on the White House lawn. A born moderate, Obama allows that he might not have been ideological enough in the face of Mitch McConnell, whose primary concern was then “clawing [his] way back to power.” Indeed, one of the most compelling aspects of the book, as smoothly written as his previous books, is Obama’s cleareyed scene-setting for how the political landscape would become so fractured—surely a topic he’ll expand on in the next volume.
A top-notch political memoir and serious exercise in practical politics for every reader.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6316-9
Page Count: 768
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2020
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An important dialogue at a fraught time, emphasizing mutual candor, curiosity, and respect.
Two bestselling authors engage in an enlightening back-and-forth about Jewishness and antisemitism.
Acho, author of Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man, and Tishby, author of Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth, discuss many of the searing issues for Jews today, delving into whether Jewishness is a religion, culture, ethnicity, or community—or all of the above. As Tishby points out, unlike in Christianity, one can be comfortably atheist and still be considered a Jew. She defines Judaism as a “big tent” religion with four main elements: religion, peoplehood, nationhood, and the idea of tikkun olam (“repairing the world through our actions”). She addresses candidly the hurtful stereotypes about Jews (that they are rich and powerful) that Acho grew up with in Dallas and how Jews internalize these antisemitic judgments. Moreover, Tishby notes, “it is literally impossible to be Jewish and not have any connection with Israel, and I’m not talking about borders or a dot on the map. Judaism…is an indigenous religion.” Acho wonders if one can legitimately criticize “Jewish people and their ideologies” without being antisemitic, and Tishby offers ways to check whether one’s criticism of Jews or Zionism is antisemitic or factually straightforward. The authors also touch on the deteriorating relationship between Black and Jewish Americans, despite their historically close alliance during the civil rights era. “As long as Jewish people get to benefit from appearing white while Black people have to suffer for being Black, there will always be resentment,” notes Acho. “Because the same thing that grants you all access—your skin color—is what grants us pain and punishment in perpetuity.” Finally, the authors underscore the importance of being mutual allies, and they conclude with helpful indexes on vernacular terms and customs.
An important dialogue at a fraught time, emphasizing mutual candor, curiosity, and respect.Pub Date: April 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781668057858
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Simon Element
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2024
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