An uplifting and inspiring plea to promote peace, kindness, and humanitarianism in the face of hate.
An examination of what motivates hateful behavior and how to challenge it with positive and empathic attitudes and intercourse.
CNN commentator Kohn admits that her reputation for “being nice” has never been tested as much as during these days of anger, resentment, and Donald Trump–instigated abhorrence and bias. In questioning whether it’s actually possible for society to overcome hate, the author makes a compelling argument that though we may have become hate-prone, it’s never too late to reroute the course. She presents examples beginning with the ways and means of an aggressive band of internet trolls: complete strangers who “berate and belittle me on a daily basis” via her Twitter page. Though initiating purposeful contact with her nastiest detractors was initially futile, she humanized each of them and, in turn, condensed the root cause of their meanness as their essentialization of her as an opinionated, lesbian New Yorker. Kohn also places blame on social media platforms like Twitter, which affords trolls an expansive playing field from which to hate. In probing further, she consults with social scientists and experts on hate movements and travels across the globe to profile an ex–white supremacist and a former Middle Eastern terrorist to uncover how they’ve transformed their perceptions. The author then contrasts them with those who believe that acrimony based on differences is simply “human nature.” She also explores systemic bias fostered by faith institutions, media outlets, corporations, and politics. Quite movingly, Kohn owns her own incidents of hate by recalling (and atoning for) a cruel bullying incident in grade school. Finally, she presents a variety of universally applicable counteractions to hate—e.g., approaching dissenters with “emotional correctness” or communicating with mutual respect and compassion. The author’s passionate appeal for empathy provides a proactive springboard for readers who find themselves unable to comprehend the xenophobia and lack of civility in others.
An uplifting and inspiring plea to promote peace, kindness, and humanitarianism in the face of hate.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-61620-728-1
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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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