An intellectually scrupulous study that brings a complex political issue into sharp relief.
Verrier presents a critique of the two-party system in American politics.
Most citizens of the United States are frustrated with the endless hyper-partisanship that plagues their country’s government, observes the author, and they’re equally disenchanted with the representation provided by the two-party system. In fact, he asserts,many interpret the past 168 years of “Democratic-GOP domination” as a “chronic, debilitating disease.” Republicans and Democrats have never been farther apart, he says; the ideological distance between them has grown so vast that the expression of “obvious acrimony, if not outright hatred” has become the norm. However, overturning this arrangement is nearly impossible, as the entire electoral system is designed to enshrine it; even the Federal Election Commission favors the two-party setup. Also, Verrier says, even independent voters generally neglect alternative candidates in favor of the those offered by traditional parties, according to a Pew Research report. In this tightly argued, empirically rigorous study, the author paints a bleak picture of what he calls the “fracturing of American society,” and the ways in which the ideological gap between the parties is encouraged by the American electoral system. Verrier vividly compares the major parties to professional sports teams: “Those two teams destined for the showdown—year after year after year—may overlook the other ‘competition’ and spend the whole regular season trash-talking each other,” he says, but the pair do agree on at least one thing: that no other teams should play the game. The author’s command of the material is impressive, as when he details the condition of independent candidates in every single state for the 2018 general election. However, some readers may find his granular presentation of it to be overwhelming, and he also makes no attempt to furnish a “specific blueprint for change.” Instead, he presents a forlorn “big picture” without hope. Nevertheless, Verrier’s survey is a remarkably exacting one, and brings great clarity to an important topic.
An intellectually scrupulous study that brings a complex political issue into sharp relief.Pub Date: Aug. 16, 2022
ISBN: 978-1476689456
Page Count: 231
Publisher: McFarland
Review Posted Online: Nov. 1, 2023
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 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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