This intriguing but idiosyncratic, often garbled stab at political consensus will most likely put off more people than it...
Conservatives and liberals should come together in fight-the-power populism, argues this scattershot political manifesto.
The answer to problems of legislative gridlock, vicious partisanship and spiraling debt, the author claims, is a national unity platform he dubs “libertarian socialism.” This oxymoronic program draws on inspirations as diverse as the Constitution and Star Trek, but its core principle is an omnidirectional animus against excessive power, public or private: tyrannical TSA air-travel regulations; government infringements of privacy and due process; media monopolies; health insurance companies; sundry “[u]nholy alliances between billion-dollar corporations and millionaire government officials.” On specific issues, Watson’s brand of progressivism is all over the map—and sometimes all over the solar system. (“America should not cede a moon base to China!”) He supports Second Amendment gun rights and makes a forthright case for deploying nuclear power plants as a solution to energy and environmental crises. But he leans left in supporting unions, higher taxes to fund public investment and services, health care reform with a public option, and legalization of marijuana, coca leaves and opium. Yet sometimes he throws in a curveball, like a scheme to select primary candidates through an American Idol–style television contest. Watson’s arguments are sometimes lucid but often shaky; to extend Medicare to everyone, for example, he incoherently proposes that “initial funding will come from all of the IOUs our government owes the people.” He assumes that passionate social controversies over abortion, gay marriage and the like will easily yield to callow expedience and split-the-difference compromise. (America should allow unrestricted entry to all Mexicans who can pass an English test, he contends, in order to absorb the “young and fertile” immigrants it needs and atone for the sins of Yankee imperialism.) As blithely confused as its name, Watson’s libertarian socialism skates past the deep thinking required to address America’s clashing interests and ideologies.
This intriguing but idiosyncratic, often garbled stab at political consensus will most likely put off more people than it wins over.Pub Date: Nov. 28, 2011
ISBN: 978-1257020928
Page Count: 198
Publisher: Lulu
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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