Eloquent if tendentious historical snapshots of the conservative tradition in American thought.
A collection of essays and speeches—mostly from the 20th century—that argue tacitly that today’s conservatism needs an intellectual reboot.
Bacevich (The Age of Illusions: How America Squandered Its Cold War Victory, 2020, etc.), who served as an officer in the Army, doesn’t include any of his own work in this wide-ranging volume. In the introduction, he makes patent his anti-Trump attitude, calling the president a “sleaze, narcissist, chronic dissembler, unscrupulous tycoon, [and] tax cheat.” The book is arranged thematically, and each section comprises pieces organized chronologically. Most of the contributors, drawn from a variety of disciplines and eras, are familiar: William F. Buckley Jr., Walter Lippmann, Whittaker Chambers, Reinhold Niebuhr, Zora Neale Hurston, John Crowe Ransom, Wendell Berry, Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge, Joan Didion, Antonin Scalia, Milton Friedman, and Shelby Steele. The unspoken theme of many pieces is that conservatism once had a scholarly, articulate, even elitist foundation, but anyone who peruses today’s news knows that this has evanesced. Also present throughout the book are themes that have long occupied conservative thought: American power and war, anti-communism, religion in public life, isolationism versus intervention, regional rights, and free markets. In an essay from 1947, James Burnham argues that while race is a significant issue in America, it is not nearly as bad as it would be under a totalitarian regime. Unfortunately, many of the Southern writers ignore slavery and Jim Crow in their discussions of liberty. Also troubling: A number of writers urge the reining in of what they see as hurried social changes, a position that seems to suggest a desire to maintain the status quo. Bacevich acknowledges that most of his contributors are white males, but he doesn’t want to “falsify history” by including minority voices that were not prominent thinkers during their eras.
Eloquent if tendentious historical snapshots of the conservative tradition in American thought.Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-59853-656-0
Page Count: 500
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: Jan. 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlanticsenior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Though cheerleading occasionally grates, Plouffe offers good fodder for readers willing to put in the effort and follow his...
Barack Obama’s former campaign manager and senior adviser weighs in on what it will take to defeat Donald Trump and repair some of the damage caused by the previous election’s “historically disturbing and perhaps democracy-destroying outcome.”
Plouffe (The Audacity To Win: The Inside Story and Lessons of Barack Obama's Historic Victory, 2009) managed Obama’s successful campaigns in 2008 and 2012. His unsurprising goal in 2020 is to take down Trump, and he provides a detailed guide for every American to become involved beyond just voting. Where the author is not offering specific suggestions for individual involvement, he engages in optimistic encouragement to put readers in the mindset to entertain his suggestions. Plouffe wisely realizes that many potential readers feel beaten down by the relentlessness of Trump’s improper behavior and misguided policies, so there is plenty of motivational exhortation that highly motivated readers might find unnecessary. When he turns to voting statistics, he’s on solid ground. Plouffe expresses certainty that Trump will face opposition from at least 65 million voters in the 2020 election. One of the author’s goals is to increase that number to somewhere between 70 and 75 million, which would be enough to win not only the popular votes for the Democratic Party nominee, but also the Electoral College by a comfortable margin. Some of that increased number can be achieved by increasing the percentage of citizens who vote, with additional gains from voters who vote for the Democratic nominee rather than symbolically supporting a third-party candidate. Plouffe also feels optimistic about persuading Obama supporters who—perhaps surprisingly—voted for Trump in 2016. As for individual involvement prior to November, the author favors direct action. Door-to-door canvassing is his favorite method, but he offers alternatives for those who cannot or will not take their opinions to the streets, including campaigning via social media. And while the author would love to change the Electoral College, he wisely tells readers they must live with it again this time around.
Though cheerleading occasionally grates, Plouffe offers good fodder for readers willing to put in the effort and follow his advice.Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-7949-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
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