Provocative if depressing, and required reading for the public-policy–minded.
Civic-minded Americans are getting to be as rare as passenger pigeons, writes Harvard political scientist Patterson—and the system likes it just fine.
“The juice has been squeezed out of elections,” declares Patterson (Out of Order, 1993) in this engaging study of modern politics, an outgrowth of the Pew Charitable Trusts–sponsored Vanishing Voter Project, which conducted interviews with some 90,000 eligible voters during and after the 2000 presidential election. Weary and cynical, Americans no longer bother to study up on candidates and issues, no longer tune in to watch debates and conventions, can scarcely be bothered to vote—though, he adds, in the wake of the 2000 fiasco, many wish they had. In the Gore-Bush contest, less than half of the electorate cast a vote. Had all eligible voters turned out, Patterson observes, “the Democrats would have captured the presidency and both houses of Congress.” The present active electorate represents a victory for the status quo: those who do vote are proportionally older and wealthier than the statistically average American, and they tend to have stronger and more conservative opinions on matters such as gun control, labor rights, and abortion; the lower classes, conversely, are scarcely present in modern elections and turn out in numbers far lower than in any other industrial democracy (and, Patterson notes, on a par with India). Patterson attributes this sweeping decline in citizen involvement to many causes, among them the disgraceful quality of the contemporary media and the candidates alike. He also suggests that the system does not serve average citizens well, noting that after September 11, there was no shortage of desire on the part of citizens to do their civic duty—but few outlets for them to do so, apart from purely symbolic gestures such as flying flags. By way of remedy, he suggests a number of measures designed to remove at least some of the tedium of the current electoral process, including a reformed primary system and a shorter campaign cycle.
Provocative if depressing, and required reading for the public-policy–minded.Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2002
ISBN: 0-375-41406-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2002
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
PERSPECTIVES
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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