Though occasionally overwhelming in the sheer volume of material, this is an erudite and passionately argued work.
The third volume of the author’s authoritative constitutional trilogy puts forth a brave argument on the importance of popular sovereignty as the galvanizing force in civil rights.
Nothing can stop an idea whose time has come, Ackerman (Law and Political Science/Yale Univ.) argues in this third scholarly installment of the We the People series. The author is a proponent of the so-called living Constitution and propounds eloquently that the American voters continually made their case for a collective We the People legitimization of power during what he calls the Second Reconstruction and the civil rights era. The struggle among all three branches of government has always decided this legitimacy, whether it was the presidency of Ulysses S. Grant in championing the Reconstruction Amendments, Franklin Roosevelt’s court-packing to drive through his New Deal programs, or the Supreme Court’s decision in the Jim Crow–shattering Brown v. Board of Education. In the case of the civil rights era, it took Lyndon Johnson’s series of landmark statutes, passed through a liberal Congress, to institutionalize equality and amend the Constitution more powerfully than even the 24th Amendment (banning the poll tax) could. These statutes included the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Voting Rights Act of 1965 and Fair Housing Act of 1968. Yet it was the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the bloody Selma march of 1965 that tipped Johnson’s hand to bestow to American blacks “the full blessings of American life.” The end of the dreaded poll tax and the unwavering support of President Richard Nixon for these same landmark statutes underscored the nation’s egalitarian commitment. In the second and third parts of the book, Ackerman delves into the constitutional detail of these landmark statutes.
Though occasionally overwhelming in the sheer volume of material, this is an erudite and passionately argued work.Pub Date: March 4, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-674-05029-7
Page Count: 374
Publisher: Belknap/Harvard Univ.
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2014
A heartfelt if somewhat unsurprising view of old age by the former president. Carter (Living Faith, 1996, etc.) succinctly evaluates the evolution and current status of federal policies concerning the elderly (including a balanced appraisal of the difficulties facing the Social Security system). He also meditates, while drawing heavily on autobiographical anecdotes, on the possibilities for exploration and intellectual and spiritual growth in old age. There are few lightning bolts to dazzle in his prescriptions (cultivate family ties; pursue the restorative pleasures of hobbies and socially minded activities). Yet the warmth and frankness of Carter’s remarks prove disarming. Given its brevity, the work is more of a call to senior citizens to reconsider how best to live life than it is a guide to any of the details involved.
Pub Date: Oct. 26, 1998
ISBN: 0-345-42592-8
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1998
Thus the second most costly war in American history, whose “outcome seemed little short of a miracle.” A sterling account.
A master storyteller’s character-driven account of a storied year in the American Revolution.
Against world systems, economic determinist and other external-cause schools of historical thought, McCullough (John Adams, 2001, etc.) has an old-fashioned fondness for the great- (and not-so-great) man tradition, which may not have much explanatory power but almost always yields better-written books. McCullough opens with a courteous nod to the customary villain in the story of American independence, George III, who turns out to be a pleasant and artistically inclined fellow who relied on poor advice; his Westmoreland, for instance, was a British general named Grant who boasted that with 5,000 soldiers he “could march from one end of the American continent to the other.” Other British officers agitated for peace, even as George wondered why Americans would not understand that to be a British subject was to be free by definition. Against these men stood arrayed a rebel army that was, at the least, unimpressive; McCullough observes that New Englanders, for instance, considered washing clothes to be women’s work and so wore filthy clothes until they rotted, with the result that Burgoyne and company had a point in thinking the Continentals a bunch of ragamuffins. The Americans’ military fortunes were none too good for much of 1776, the year of the Declaration; at the slowly unfolding battle for control over New York, George Washington was moved to despair at the sight of sometimes drunk soldiers running from the enemy and of their officers “who, instead of attending to their duty, had stood gazing like bumpkins” at the spectacle. For a man such as Washington, to be a laughingstock was the supreme insult, but the British were driven by other motives than to irritate the general—not least of them reluctance to give up a rich, fertile and beautiful land that, McCullough notes, was providing the world’s highest standard of living in 1776.
Thus the second most costly war in American history, whose “outcome seemed little short of a miracle.” A sterling account.Pub Date: June 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-7432-2671-2
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2005
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