For readers on the hunt for a fictional account of a contemporary political dispute, this is a competent if not inspiring...
Debut author Victoria’s topical thriller follows the political and personal reverberations of a tough and controversial immigration law in California.
Newly elected California Gov. Michael DiGrasso doggedly pursues the passage of a law that would make his state inhospitable to illegal immigrants and stanch their flow over porous borders. He encounters opposition from multiple quarters: Senate Minority Leader Elizabeth Stern proves a devious and underhanded adversary, while a radical group of subterranean political activists, the Reconquistas, look to undermine DiGrasso through both targeted and mass violence. Even the Supreme Court takes a swing, declaring the new law unconstitutional. Undaunted, DiGrasso presses on, defying the Supreme Court and igniting a tempestuous national debate on the proper role of the federal courts. Meanwhile, the story tracks the embattled lives of two Mexican families, struggling to make a home in a country that promises opportunity but denies them the stability of citizenship. Victoria does a deft job drawing out the human context of a legislative tug of war, detailing the many ways public discourse misses the complex consequences of major policy. And while the narrator clearly favors a conservative interpretation of the issue, he avoids any ideological axe-grinding or simplistic caricatures. The story unfolds at a brisk pace but sometimes flirts with haste, glossing over major developments that, if depicted in detail, could have deepened the drama. Also, while the prose is never clunky or turgid, it’s never transcendent either. At times, the content of the debate regarding judicial review borders on didactic but, for readers looking for a constitutional primer on federalism wrapped in fictional drama, those sections of the novel might be more enlightening than pedantic.
For readers on the hunt for a fictional account of a contemporary political dispute, this is a competent if not inspiring option.Pub Date: June 15, 2012
ISBN: 978-0984655908
Page Count: 192
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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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