Journey to America’s west in search of a nation that may no longer exist. The best travel writing not only describes a place but also explains it. In a series of well- crafted books (The Ends of the Earth, 1996, etc.), Atlantic Monthly contributing editor Kaplan has performed these dual tasks with eloquence and insight. Here he turns his attention to his own country and finds a troubling present and a discomfiting future. America is literally coming apart at the seams, and in the west Kaplan most clearly finds evidence of this. As America’s geographical boundaries no longer shield it from the international economy, the middle-class ideal of America is becoming the reality of a two-class system: the technologically skilled haves and the unskilled have-nots. The skilled leave the cities, retreating further and further into the west’s open spaces, to suburban oases of gated communities and private police. In a world economy, such people have more in common with their counterparts around the world than with the have-nots they—ve left behind amid urban decay. Meanwhile, the core ideological values of America, though the author remains vague as to what these are, are becoming displaced, as he writes, “by the cultural patterns— of Old World societies, such as hierarchy and paternalism, which are being imported by immigrants. Other processes are also at work. Canada and the northwest, Mexico and the southwest threaten to become autonomous economic and social entities. “How much longer,” Kaplan wonders, “will the patriotic marches of John Philip Sousa move America’s inhabitants?” Kaplan captures well the postmodern uneasiness adrift in America, but the above quote seems presumptive of what America once was. He has, in other words, already defined what America should be before he begins his journey. But if his America is not there, does that mean America is gone for everyone? A flawed work, to be sure, alarmist and overwrought at times. A clarity of vision remains, however, that demands our attention. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-679-45190-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
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
PERSPECTIVES
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