A coolly delivered small-focus study.
A lively treatise on the most offensive word in the English language, from a renowned expert on civil rights and black legal history (Race, Crime, and the Law, 1997).
Jumping off from a series of lectures he gave in 1999, Harvard Law Professor Kennedy explores with care the cultural, social, and legal significance of the powerful N-word. He looks at the unique staying-power of this highly charged term, asking why and how so forbidden an expression of race hate has come to also be used, in various forms, as an expression of esteem, power, and affection. Kennedy gives an account of the word’s origin and history in 17th-century America, examines revealing court cases in which it has figured, and in a chapter entitled “Pitfalls in Fighting Nigger” analyzes the various efforts on campus and in the workplace to inhibit its use. He has a well-tuned ear for the diverse ways the word has infiltrated the American vernacular, and strong views about the many PC arguments that have swirled around the issues it raises; he cites many wrongful abuses of the term, but tends to be critical of excessive measures taken by some to control or punish offensive speech. Rap music, TV shows, films, and books also get the treatment, with discussions of many familiar black artists, from Spike Lee to Bill Cosby to Tupac Shakur, and commentary on the edgy, self-deprecating humor of Chris Rock, Richard Pryor, and the stars of Def Comedy Jam, as well as the long-running controversy over the ’50s TV sitcom Amos ’n’ Andy, which featured black stereotypes. Kennedy is at his best, however, when describing and interpreting legal cases, and his explanations of relevant courtroom dramas move it all along as he guides the reader to an understanding of the “mere words” and “fighting words” doctrines that have helped shape legal thinking on the subject. While some seasoned readers of black history may feel there’s not much here about “nigger” they don’t already know, Kennedy’s knack for storytelling and his overall smarts make this a very enjoyable one-sitting affair.
A coolly delivered small-focus study.Pub Date: Jan. 22, 2002
ISBN: 0-375-42172-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
