A vividly personal case for books that teach young readers how to cope with desire and live a life of self-acceptance.
Looking back at “a largely forgotten” trial.
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Many books have been freed from censorship by courts, James Joyce’s Ulysses and D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover being only two of the most noteworthy. Aycock, a North Carolina writer and librarian who has devoted much of his life to the freedom of literary access, argues that another case matters. In 1982, the Supreme Court heard Island Trees v. Pico. “In the process,” he notes, “it gave us the first—and so far, only—library book ban case to be decided by the United States Supreme Court.” The case dates to 1975, when the Island Trees Union Free School District, on Long Island, sought to ban 11 books from its libraries, including Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, Richard Wright’s Black Boy, and Oliver LaFarge’s Laughing Boy. “No one had complained about these books,” he writes. “There had been no challenges, no letters to the editor, no public shouting matches. …The board simply acted. Like a sleeper cell.” Was removing these books a violation of the First Amendment? The court split. But what matters is the larger question of how potentially transgressive or challenging content can help young people make personal and social decisions. Each of the books in the case gets a full reading here, and the payoff is this: “Teens want sexual information. They need it. …When people search for information, they usually have one of three goals: to seek answers, to reduce uncertainty, or to make sense of a situation.” These goals, for Aycock, constitute the social function of literature. They also constitute the personal impetus for his book. “I entered middle school in 1985 and never received any sex education at all,” he writes. “Is it any wonder I turned to novels?” What makes the book more than a screed against the censor is the author’s unique personal investment. As he says, books teach what cannot be taught in class.
A vividly personal case for books that teach young readers how to cope with desire and live a life of self-acceptance.Pub Date: June 11, 2026
ISBN: 9798216196471
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
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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