A well-researched study that will appeal mostly to fellow academics.
A law professor examines how U.S. citizenship laws have neglected the “complexities and contradictions” of individual migrants.
America has long prided itself on being a safe haven for what Emma Lazarus immortalized as “the huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” However, according to García Hernández, author of Migrating to Prison, this safe-haven status is more myth than reality because of what he calls a “romanticized view of migrants…[as uniformly] morally upstanding, self-reliant, up-by-the-bootstraps” individuals. He suggests that where this point is most visible is in the relationship between federal immigration law and criminal law. Anyone can seek asylum in the U.S. regardless of how that person gets to America, but federal law does not protect such individuals from prosecution. This situation has created increasingly problematic tensions between what the U.S. purports to be and what it actually is, especially after 9/11. Riding on fears of increased terrorist activity, George W. Bush created the Department of Homeland Security to deter the inflow of hostile immigrants along with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, both of which focus on the border between the U.S. and Mexico. These events signaled a sea change in immigration policies while also laying the foundation for the “overblown rhetoric” politicians like Donald Trump would later use to provoke outrage over threats posed by immigrants, especially those hailing from south of the border. Using individual stories—like that of an aunt who, risking deportation, routinely gave shelter and assistance to non-citizens—the author demonstrates the brokenness of an immigration system he believes is in need of greater compassion toward imperfect people trying to lead better lives. Though tending at times toward historical digressiveness, this book offers timely insights into the vexing problem of citizenship in America.
A well-researched study that will appeal mostly to fellow academics.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2024
ISBN: 9781620977798
Page Count: 240
Publisher: The New Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
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
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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