A powerfully argued study of a legal system that favors those who “persevere in undermining Black freedom.”
A searing indictment of judicially condoned—and even enshrined—racism in American law.
Former Villanova law professor Starkey, author of In Defense of Uncle Tom: Why Blacks Must Police Racial Loyalty (2015), here proposes that what he calls “the constitutional Trinity—the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments” might have been enough to ensure “complete Black freedom” had the Supreme Court not consistently aligned itself with “caste preservationists” who, from the time of Reconstruction onward, have created laws and policies that support the subordination of Black Americans. One early test concerned whether now-emancipated Blacks could serve on juries, which West Virginia had banned. In Starkey’s extensive account of the legal arguments that followed, West Virginia’s highest court had ruled that the inability to serve on a jury did not mean “the denial of equal protection of the laws,” a neat bit of semantic parsing that provides the basis for Starkey’s revealing analysis of how the law both interprets and constructs the Constitution: “The country’s foundational text includes a guarantee of equality powerful enough to combat any pathogen of oppression. What it achieves depends on interpretation.” One leg of interpretation is intent, he adds, and intent is always difficult to establish. From that carefully elaborated starting point, Starkey moves on to examine some of the most critically important legal cases touching on racial justice, among them Plessy, Brown, and Bakke, always with twists of judicial interpretation that, he argues convincingly, never quite deliver promised equality to Black stakeholders in the polity. Indeed, since the Reagan era, the ascendant conservative moment has insisted that whites are the victims in “affirmative action, quotas, and other race-conscious programs geared toward atoning for past racial injustices that needed no atoning,” and the tenor of current politics suggests that no improvement is in the offing.
A powerfully argued study of a legal system that favors those who “persevere in undermining Black freedom.”Pub Date: June 3, 2025
ISBN: 9780385547383
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.
An insider’s chronicle of a pivotal presidential campaign.
Several months into the mounting political upheaval of Donald Trump’s second term and following a wave of bestselling political exposés, most notably Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s Original Sin on Joe Biden’s health and late decision to step down, former Vice President Harris offers her own account of the consequential months surrounding Biden’s withdrawal and her swift campaign for the presidency. Structured as brief chapters with countdown headers from 107 days to Election Day, the book recounts the campaign’s daily rigors: vetting a running mate, navigating back-to-back rallies, preparing for the convention and the debate with Trump, and deflecting obstacles in the form of both Trump’s camp and Biden’s faltering team. Harris aims to set the record straight on issues that have remained hotly debated. While acknowledging Biden’s advancing decline, she also highlights his foreign-policy steadiness: “His years of experience in foreign policy clearly showed….He was always focused, always commander in chief in that room.” More blame is placed on his inner circle, especially Jill Biden, whom Harris faults for pushing him beyond his limits—“the people who knew him best, should have realized that any campaign was a bridge too far.” Throughout, she highlights her own qualifications and dismisses suggestions that an open contest might have better served the party: “If they thought I was down with a mini primary or some other half-baked procedure, I was quick to disabuse them.” Facing Trump’s increasingly unhinged behavior, Harris never openly doubts her ability to confront him. Yet she doesn’t fully persuade the reader that she had the capacity to counter his dominance, suggesting instead that her defeat stemmed from a lack of time—a theme underscored by the urgency of the book’s title. If not entirely sanguine about the future, she maintains a clear-eyed view of the damage already done: “Perhaps so much damage that we will have to re-create our government…something leaner, swifter, and much more efficient.”
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781668211656
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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