A philosophically challenging account of how the voting population can be transformed into a more reasonable, and less...
A thoughtful reflection on the conditions necessary for effective voting and, by extension, true democracy.
Peterson’s first book is much more ambitious than its subtitle indicates. Written as a kind of Socratic dialogue between two interlocutors, the arguments can become a bit didactic but are impressively researched and refreshingly unconventional. While his analysis revolves around the thorny issue of voter participation, he ultimately sets his sights higher, on the foundation of democratic governance itself. What distinguishes simple majoritarian rule from authentic democratic practice, he argues, is a system that encourages the reasonable and meaningful participation of its citizens. To repair an electoral system in tatters, Peterson recommends some startling measures. For example, he contends that presidential debates should largely be between parties rather than single candidates and conducted by email exchange to reduce gratuitous grandstanding and promote clear, informative responses to questions. He would also make familiarity with those debates a precondition of voting in order to create a citizenry better educated about the central issues. Included in the text is an “Abstract of a Possible Voter Education Law” spelling out how his suggestions would translate into real legislation. The discussion ranges over a diverse range of topics, from universal health care to corporate taxation. And Peterson doesn’t shy away from diving into more philosophical waters, at one point suggesting that the idea of democracy presupposes some conception of a transcendent divinity. Still, the thematic core of the work is a rehabilitation of the voting system. “As you pointed out earlier, a voter education process embodies an idea—the idea that simple existence for 18 years or more isn’t sufficient to qualify citizens for voting—that, in what you’re proposing, they also need to read the voter materials. This isn’t an arbitrary requirement, but is one that’s premised on the belief that knowledge and understanding are important.”
A philosophically challenging account of how the voting population can be transformed into a more reasonable, and less ideological, group of decision-makers.Pub Date: July 4, 2014
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 196
Publisher: 4th of July Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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