A penetrating collection that is certain to challenge the readers’ views of those living in poverty.
An anthology presented by the Economic Hardship Reporting Project that explores social inequality and economic injustice in the U.S.
The EHRP is “a nonprofit organization that keeps journalists, essayists, and photographers in the national conversation on economic injustice.” Edited by executive director Quart and managing director Wallis, this collection of essays, poems, and photographs, originally published in leading magazines and journals, highlights the valuable insights gained by these journalists in confronting their own hardships. By publishing these works, the EHRP seeks to mobilize people “to fight for economic justice.” The book is divided into five sections: The Body, Home, Family, Work, and Class. These emotionally charged and heart-wrenching narratives are both wide-ranging and powerfully rendered. Journalists from a variety of backgrounds share their experiences, including a woman who was forced to perform her own abortion following the shutdown of clinics in Texas and a 40-something man who donated plasma in order to pay the rent. One woman was homeless for two years, and she demonstrates the anxiety of feeling constantly on alert as well as the cyclical effects sleep deprivation has on homeless individuals. Another journalist shares how her assumptions about people without houses changed following her experience taking in a couple in Los Angeles. Other topics include inequalities in maternal health care for the uninsured and underinsured; the dangers low-wage workers are often expected to endure, which were particularly evident during the Covid-19 pandemic; struggles with racial identity; and the power of shared community. In addition to the editors, other contributors include Camonghne Felix, Kim Kelly, Elizabeth Rubin, Michelle Tea, Mitchell S. Jackson, and Astra Taylor. “The writers represented here,” writes Quart, “may have lost their jobs, their homes, or even the narrative thread of their lives, but in confronting those hardships they have gained valuable insights into problems facing millions in this country.”
A penetrating collection that is certain to challenge the readers’ views of those living in poverty.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2023
ISBN: 9781642599657
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Haymarket Books
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2023
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
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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SEEN & HEARD
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