A persuasive, up-to-date proposal that deserves widespread attention.
A convincing argument in favor of a constitutional guarantee of the right to vote.
In this comprehensive follow-up to Cheap Speech: How Disinformation Poisons Our Politics―and How to Cure It, Hasen lays out a plan to secure the franchise for all eligible voters in the face of its many current barriers. To strengthen his case, he provides a draft text of an amendment to the Constitution that would do just that. In his eyes, the principal obstacles in the way of protected voting rights are the states’ fetters on access to the ballot box, discrimination against targeted groups, the purposefully ineffective administration of elections, false claims of fraud, and the decisions of the current Supreme Court majority, whom he considers “more dangerous” than any earlier ones. The author, director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at the UCLA School of Law, argues that Electoral College reform is a non-starter, and a nonpartisan federal voting administration, whose creation he earlier supported, would not offer adequate protection of the vote. Still, Hasen is astute enough to recognize that his amendment can’t shoot for the moon. Leaving some issues to future adjudication, he omits from his text a vote guarantee for felons and full voting rights for residents of American territories. Though he is arguably over-optimistic, the author explains how, without such provisions—as well as the elimination of any reason to cheat at the ballot box since everyone will be able to vote—the amendment could gain favor with lawmakers from both sides of the aisle. The trouble with Hasen’s case is that the author doesn’t fully account for the brutal politics facing any amendment’s congressional approval, followed by ratification by the states. Nonetheless, his lively, closely argued book is bound to ignite a public effort to achieve its ends.
A persuasive, up-to-date proposal that deserves widespread attention.Pub Date: Feb. 20, 2024
ISBN: 9780691257716
Page Count: 232
Publisher: Princeton Univ.
Review Posted Online: Sept. 22, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
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 fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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