Sometimes diffuse but with many provocative observations on world history and its present twists.
An ambitious effort to discern patterns in the rise and fall of world empires.
“In the four thousand years since the first empire appeared,” writes McCoy, the chair of the history department at the University of Wisconsin, “the world has witnessed a continuous succession of some 200 [empires], of which 70 were large or lasting.” Granted that many of those empires have faded into historical limbo, that’s an impressive record of political organization. One plank on which empires found their power is not often considered: energy and its flows and control. In this regard, McCoy considers the transfer of world dominion from Great Britain to the U.S. in the 20th century. After World War II, the U.S. controlled a vast inventory of energy resources and was directed by a forward-thinking, world-embracing governing class, as against Britain’s “leaders from its insular landed aristocracy, animated by a sense of racial superiority.” Less than a century later, the American empire is giving way to a new world order headed by China. “While Washington was spilling its blood and treasure into desert sands,” writes the author, “Beijing had been investing much of its accumulated trade surplus in the integration of the ‘world island’ of Africa, Asia, and Europe into an economic powerhouse.” China’s leaders play a very long game, with energy and raw materials capture being key features in a time of catastrophic climate change and upheaval. McCoy is not entirely successful in forging the general theory of empires promised at the outset of his book, and he might have better confined his argument to the U.S. and China from the start. This rivalry—and soon, inevitable transfer of power—is, after all, at the heart of his argument, and McCoy’s account is compelling as he details our frittering away of political influence and fiscal treasure while China has been busy building a superior navy and “the world’s largest high-speed rail system.”
Sometimes diffuse but with many provocative observations on world history and its present twists.Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-64259-578-9
Page Count: 380
Publisher: Haymarket Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 10, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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