An unpredictable tonic for what ails America.
New age approach to economic and political reform in the United States.
Ficalora borrows heavily from Jewish mysticism in this spiritual remedy for the dishonor and indecency plaguing the United States. Honor and morality are derived from a set of ten “Absolutes,” similar to the Kabbalah. But unlike the Kabbalah, Ficalora suggests her guiding principles be applied not only to nations but individuals as well. She calls upon every American to attain messianic consciousness. This takes on especially great importance in the United States, a land ruled by the people, for the people. The author came of age in the 1970s, immersed in drug use and free love despite her strict Catholic upbringing. This youthful rebellion later turned into social activism, which she embraced even further after becoming a mother. While her progressive tendencies always informed her approach to life, Ficalora didn’t become particularly inspired until the 2000 election of George W. Bush. She began studying American government and economics in earnest alongside her spiritual research. The fruits of her labor appear in this treatise. The author draws conclusions readers might expect from someone so long steeped in the political left: Bush lied, the war on terror is a farce and money rules the world. Her thinly veiled conspiracy theories about the “Money Power” behind all war and, as a result, all modern political power are nothing new. Ficalora might even be able to present a credible argument if her presentation were less dramatic and outrage not so overwrought. The author’s economic views, however, are surprisingly conservative or libertarian in origin; she speaks of her high regard for Milton Friedman’s concepts. The resulting call to action is unusual. Individuals are encouraged to accept their role as the nation’s destined saviors: “You can be a Messiah.” Add a heavy sprinkle of pop references from Mr. T to Pink Floyd to the mix and Ficalora’s book is a curious and uninhibited take on modern politics.
An unpredictable tonic for what ails America.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-0-9799359-0-9
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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