A political treatise that focuses on empowering readers with its ideas.
A political writer and former Democratic Party congressional candidate endeavors to galvanize America’s liberal left by illustrating how the Republican Party has become a destructive force.
Schmookler (Debating the Good Society, 1999, etc.) presents what he sees as a nation in crisis—a country careening under the harmful influence of the Republican right wing, unprotected by a liberal America unwilling to acknowledge they are in a fight between good and evil. Nothing better crystallizes this than the 2014 elections, he says, in which a contrarian, disruptive Republican Party was rewarded with greater political control. The weak challenge from the Democrats, he asserts, comes from their basic unwillingness to acknowledge and vocally confront the right wing’s orthodoxy of “brokenness”—the hallmark, he says, of an evil force that lusts for wealth and power, pursues conflict, and relies on dishonesty to divide and influence others. Upon realizing this, Schmookler says, liberals will be able to embrace their role as a force for good and press back against the machinations at work in the government; to that end, he draws comparisons to conflicts in pop-culture narratives, such as the 2009 film Avatar, the Star Wars series, and The Lord of the Rings saga. Noting what he sees as similarities between today’s political climate and those during the American Civil War and the rise of Nazism in Germany, the book illustrates how groups thrived on spreading brokenness, and how they spread destruction until people stood up to them. Overall, Schmookler’s book is intellectually informative and socially eye-opening. He cites many of his own, earlier writings on politics and social evolution, offering ways to identify what he sees as evil through the upheaval and anarchy they cause, so that readers may meet them with absolute, moral truths. However, the text is quite dense and often necessarily repetitive when exploring some of its more abstract ideas. It more often seems to be aiming to inspire readers, rather than suggest concrete actions. Other sections, such as the “Interlude” chapters, seem self-indulgent, as the author expresses anxieties over sharing his message and speculating on its success.
A political treatise that focuses on empowering readers with its ideas.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2015
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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