A fierce and thought-provoking condemnation of the American school system.
Author, filmmaker, and musician Soling presents a manifesto for empowering students in a system of mandatory education.
The author states his case in blunt terms, addressing high-school-aged readers directly and informing them that schools are places of humiliation by design: “By being deprived of free speech and free assembly, you are literally held captive,” he writes. “By being forced to sit in an uncomfortable chair all day long and listen to someone you did not choose to listen to, and read texts you do not want to read, your most basic democratic rights are violated.” In these pages, Soling outlines what he sees as the evils of the educational system, from locker searches to corporal punishment (which is legal in 19 states, and which he rightly calls “sickening”). He also describes the many things students can do to fight such evils, from organizing protests to filing police reports. Although many of the actions that he advocates in this slim work may have significant consequences for students, including poor grades, he repeatedly stresses that they shouldn’t commit illegal acts while disrupting the formal structure of their education. Because the book is polemical in nature, it’s unsurprising that it includes a chapter titled “Bad Arguments in Defense of Schooling”; the author ably short-circuits notions that it teaches interpersonal skills or acclimates students to authority structures they’ll encounter in adult life. For Soling, school is nothing more than “an institution that selectively dispenses information in an incoherent manner within an oppressive construct that interferes with learning,” and he effectively offers no compromise on this point. Indeed, his prose is electric in its passion and anger; even readers who are unconvinced by his case are likely to find themselves rethinking old certainties about a pillar of American life.
A fierce and thought-provoking condemnation of the American school system.Pub Date: Jan. 5, 2015
ISBN: 9780990939900
Page Count: 100
Publisher: Spectacle Films, Inc
Review Posted Online: Sept. 10, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A powerful reiteration of principles—and some fresh ideas—from the longest-serving independent in congressional history.
Another chapter in a long fight against inequality.
Building on his Fighting Oligarchy tour, which this year drew 280,000 people to rallies in red and blue states, Sanders amplifies his enduring campaign for economic fairness. The Vermont senator offers well-timed advice for combating corruption and issues a robust plea for national soul-searching. His argument rests on alarming data on the widening wealth gap’s impact on democracy. Bolstered by a 2010 Supreme Court decision that removed campaign finance limits, “100 billionaire families spent $2.6 billion” on 2024 elections. Sanders focuses on the Trump administration and congressional Republicans, describing their enactment of the “Big Beautiful Bill,” with its $1 trillion in tax breaks for the richest Americans and big social safety net cuts, as the “largest transfer of wealth” in living memory. But as is his custom, he spreads the blame, dinging Democrats for courting wealthy donors while ignoring the “needs and suffering” of the working class. “Trump filled the political vacuum that the Democrats created,” he writes, a resonant diagnosis. Urging readers not to surrender to despair, Sanders offers numerous legislative proposals. These would empower labor unions, cut the workweek to 32 hours, regulate campaign spending, reduce gerrymandering, and automatically register 18-year-olds to vote. Grassroots supporters can help by running for local office, volunteering with a campaign, and asking educators how to help support public schools. Meanwhile, Sanders asks us “to question the fundamental moral values that underlie” a system that enables “the top 1 percent” to “own more wealth than the bottom 93 percent.” Though his prose sometimes reads like a transcribed speech with built-in applause lines, Sanders’ ideas are specific, clear, and commonsensical. And because it echoes previous statements, his call for collective introspection lands as genuine.
A powerful reiteration of principles—and some fresh ideas—from the longest-serving independent in congressional history.Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2025
ISBN: 9798217089161
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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