A revealing look at Native American lives.
Women’s strength.
Literary scholar Baker and historian Johnston examine the lives and challenges of Native American women, focused on their feminism, activism, and power. Their book asks “what southern and western history would look like if viewed through the eyes of a diverse sample of Indigenous women.” Women’s traditional power in many tribal nations was undermined by contact with Europeans, in part because of forced removal from their traditional lands, in part from attending boarding schools that were focused on “educating the Indian out of the Indian,” and in part because of the allotment system that parceled tribal lands to individual Native American men. Geraldine Hull McKinney (1916-2005) recalls spending seven years at a Christian mission boarding school, sent by her mother, who was struggling financially, but instead of distancing Geraldine from her roots, her education inspired a strong connection to the tribe. Geraldine’s daughter, Terri McKinney Baker (1948-2022), learned from her mother “that passing on responsibility, skills, worldview, identity awareness, network building, and coalition development is fundamental to Native American women’s power.” She became an ethnohistorian, designed courses in Native American studies, and worked to create an American Indian community for her students. Other voices include Terri’s friend, Wilma Mankiller, the first female chief of the Cherokee Nation, an “unapologetic feminist”; Indigenous feminist LaDonna Harris and her daughters, Kathryn Harris Tijerina and Laura Harris; artists, including writers, potters, basket weavers, painters, and singers; and Indigenous activists who work to promote tribal sovereignty and cultural survival through their leadership in politics, education, and health care. “Medicine,” the authors write, “is that essence of a person which is a unique spiritual gift or talent. Good medicine is sacred, healing power,” which these women have in abundance.
A revealing look at Native American lives.Pub Date: June 15, 2025
ISBN: 9780820373775
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Univ. of Georgia
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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