Those who like to read about national politics will be rewarded, and even entertained, by Lozada’s pages.
An insider’s account of the nation’s capital based on the political literature surrounding it.
As a Pulitzer Prize–winning book critic, Lozada collects observations on the countless books he’s inhaled concerning the city’s power politics. “Not just masochism—transcendent masochism,” he writes, gamely. “That’s what people think it is like to read political books.” Nonetheless, most people want to know what these books say, even if they’re written by people far down the pecking order. They’re not interested in the quality of the work so much as the news that the books contain. Lozada is admirably evenhanded: He shakes his head at Mike Pence’s ability to find excuses for the boss who wasn’t troubled by the prospect of him being hanged in front of the Capitol, just as much as he bemoans Kamala Harris’ “eagerness to stay on both sides of difficult questions.” Not content to read everything ever committed to print on Reagan, Clinton, and their fellow denizens of the Oval Office, Lozada wishes for books that don’t exist, such as a memoir by George H.W. Bush. “Perhaps he feared that his difficulties articulating a vision in speeches would recur on the page,” he ventures, while allowing that the lack of such a book makes the record incomplete. The books of Washington reveal a lot, whether Obama’s early obnoxiousness, tempered in later years by a welcome gravitas; Trump’s braying self-regard, which is no news to anyone but still annoys, even in the form of a précis; or the theorizing of scholars such as the well-known Samuel Huntington and the less well-known Albert O. Hirschman. The author’s audience is self-selecting, but they’ll be well served by his catholic survey.
Those who like to read about national politics will be rewarded, and even entertained, by Lozada’s pages.Pub Date: Feb. 27, 2024
ISBN: 9781668050736
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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