A spirited and informed assessment of American racism beyond headlines and politics.
Sharp essays on race relations from the era between the Civil Rights Act and Black Lives Matter.
Like many Black cultural critics, Walton (Mississippi: An American Journey, 1996, etc.) sees Trump-era racism as the culmination of decades of American bigotry, fueled by Jim Crow and the Southern Strategy. His goal is to show how persistent the problem has been even during what many perceived to be the calmer waters of the 1980s and Obama era. The opening essay, first published in the New York Times in 1989, calls out the bigotry and fearmongering of George H.W. Bush’s campaign ad featuring Willie Horton, a Black convict. A well-turned profile of the Rev. Al Sharpton focuses on his street-level appeal amid efforts to diminish his profile in the wake of the Tawana Brawley case. Walton explores how various occasions have given whites license to broadcast their racism, from a 1957 article by William F. Buckley defending segregation to a PBS documentary on George Wallace to the case of Christian Cooper, a demure New York City bird-watcher on whom a white woman called police simply because he wanted her to follow dog-leash laws. In the title essay, he explains why decades of “going along to get along” conduct by Black people haven’t improved race relations, asking for a society “that no longer privileges white psychic stability and emotional comfort.” Walton is plainly inspired by James Baldwin’s fury and some of his rhetorical approaches—one essay is framed as a letter to a white friend. But Walton is too resigned to thunder for change the way Baldwin did. Nor does he call for broad policy prescriptions, though he does reasonably ask why Black people have been largely denied access to the economic boom within the tech industry. Only by claiming respect for themselves rather than waiting for whites to confer it on them, he argues, can Black Americans avoid becoming the “collateral damage of a public system that fails more often than it succeeds.”
A spirited and informed assessment of American racism beyond headlines and politics.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781567927283
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Godine
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2024
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
