Most of the criticism here goes to Republicans—largely because they are in power—but the wealth of detail offered by Mann...
The United States Congress has ceased to be a deliberative body, according to two eminent political scientists with some ideas about how to fix it.
Mann (Brookings Institution) and Ornstein (American Enterprise Institute), both of whom arrived on Capitol Hill in 1969 with fellowships to study Congress, and have been doing so ever since, here review the evolution of Congress from the republic’s founding to early 2006. Bipartisanship was already waning in the final years of the era of Democratic dominance, they argue. The Republican leadership, which was trying to be provocative in order to “nationalize” Congressional races, was often denied a role in drafting important legislation, while the Democrats used the rules to pass bills with little discussion. The authors note that Speaker Newt Gingrich’s initiatives after the Republican landslide of 1994 were in the spirit of earlier reforms, de-emphasizing seniority and seeking to foster bipartisanship—but this attempt was abandoned. When George W. Bush won the presidency, House majority leaders saw themselves as mere agents of presidential policy. Party-line votes on important matters have since become the norm. Members of Congress now seem to feel they are in Washington to vote rather than to adequately discuss policy. Key pieces of legislation are badly written because amendments are not allowed. When they can, many Congressmen stay in Washington only three days a week, resulting in a decline in the quantity and quality of their work. Members of Congress have little interest in overseeing the executive branch or in how Congress functions; the latter neglect has occasioned a host of ethics scandals, which the authors discuss in detail. They also suggest independent oversight of lobbyists and five-day congressional workweeks, while recognizing that polarization in Congress reflects polarization in the country as a whole.
Most of the criticism here goes to Republicans—largely because they are in power—but the wealth of detail offered by Mann and Ornstein gives partisanship a good name.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-19-517446-1
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2006
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
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