A clear, concise look at one aspect of Lincoln, the man and the president.
Lincoln scholar Guelzo (Civil War Era/Gettysburg Coll.; Gettysburg: The Last Invasion, 2013, etc.) explores race in America as an element of African-American history as affected by Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Declaration.
Lincoln condemned slavery politically and economically but never with a mention of the racial aspect. He thought of slaves as being equal but not equal enough for the vote; in fact, he did not favor any equality of civil privilege. He never spoke of slaves as black. He believed in the separation of the races and did not want slavery to be allowed in the new territories because he wanted “them for the homes of free white people.” The author points to Lincoln’s deeper aims. He felt that slaveholders, in their greed for profit, threatened the white man’s charter of freedom, the Declaration of Independence. He saw slavery as an outrage against the law of nature. Self-determination for states was equally wrong, as a mere majority rule cannot reverse natural law. If so, when the majority turns its restrictive power against you, you will be unprotected. Guelzo provides a wonderful section on reparations, pointing out the difficulties of who should sue whom and for what. The author points out that, as only state laws allowed slavery, there is no statutory culpability in federal court. Finally, he delves into Lincoln’s religion. He was not a member of an established church but read and quoted the Bible with ease. He once said, “if General Lee was driven back from Pennsylvania, I would crown the result by the declaration of freedom to the slaves.” The author includes the political achievements of Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington’s economic work, and W.E.B. Du Bois’ cultural determination to further illuminate our perceptions of race and responsibility.
A clear, concise look at one aspect of Lincoln, the man and the president.Pub Date: Feb. 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-674-28611-5
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Harvard Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2015
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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
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