An uninspired, heavy-handed read.
A right-wing case against progressivism.
Echoing many ideas propagated within former President Donald Trump’s circle, consultant Abramson’s targets include “authoritarian” governors whose shutdown orders during the Covid-19 pandemic were allegedly “designed to shatter local economies” and Black Lives Matter “convulsions” that he says “wrecked” American cities. Similarly, the author opines that the 2020 presidential election “looked far more like an elitist coup” than a democratic referendum and that the events at the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021, “bore all the hallmarks of a false-flag operation.” The book also suggests that there’s no greater threat than “the cult of expertise.” As a former faculty member at the University of Southern California, Abramson claims that the nation’s “Credentialed Elite” have highjacked the nation’s best-paying jobs and look down on, and exert power over, “the unenlightened masses.” The book’s first half centers on the author’s grievances regarding national politics as well as the specifics of his own time in academia. The second half centers on Abramson’s specific agenda for “restoring” America, calling on his countrymen to “stop trusting the experts” and to “rebuild America’s universities into a source of national pride.” Opponents of President Trump’s right-wing populism will find much to dislike in this polemic that eschews nuance and introspection for blunt, hyperbolic jabs at progressive straw men. From its opening foreword by Sebastian Gorka, the controversial former deputy assistant to President Trump, this book revels in division in a relentless, no-holds-barred attack on progressives and progressivism, which it describes as “the enemy.” On the other side of America’s “New Civil War,” he writes, are the true “patriots loyal to the American constitutional tradition.” Those who support the book’s core ideological foundation may be interested in the few autobiographical pages that address the author’s experiences in academia. But other than that, they won’t find much that’s new here, as most chapters simply string together talking points that conservative cable-news outlets and Twitter accounts espouse on a daily basis.
An uninspired, heavy-handed read.Pub Date: June 22, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-64-543840-3
Page Count: 192
Publisher: RealClear Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 10, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
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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