A cogent and meaningful call for citizens to share the benefits and burdens of a unified society—hopefully an argument that...
A legendary journalist offers a plea for national civility and unity rooted in the ethos of the New Deal.
Peters (Lyndon B. Johnson, 2010, etc.) wields his longtime experience as founder and former editor-in-chief of the Washington Monthly to offer a thoughtful, well-reasoned argument for American citizens to pull back from political brinksmanship and embrace the values of the Roosevelt era. His first admission and caveat is as honest as it gets: “Now that I am eight-nine, I am painfully aware that there are many younger people who will doubt that I have anything useful to say.” They should listen, as Peters offers a heartfelt remembrance of a time when “the spirit of generosity was accompanied by a sense of neighborliness,” and “those who had little helped those who had even less.” Far from being a nostalgic pipe dream, Peters also examines the baby boomers’ drift toward materialism, the advent of political lobbying and its effect on how government works, and the divisive cultural issues that have triggered a fundamental schism in this nation. The book is also extraordinarily fair in its treatment of this philosophical chasm. While one chapter is devoted to the rise of the right, from Ronald Reagan to Roger Ailes, another examines the left’s cultural elitism and how “The Snob Factor” left much of the country behind. And it’s always worth listening to a guy who managed John F. Kennedy’s 1960 campaign in West Virginia and was introduced to marijuana by Allen Ginsberg; this man has stories. Most importantly, Peters is asking hard questions that neither side seems to want to answer. “People on the other side can have views we regard as deplorable without being deplorable themselves,” he writes. “If we don’t understand their side, how are we going to persuade them to see our side?”
A cogent and meaningful call for citizens to share the benefits and burdens of a unified society—hopefully an argument that isn’t already past its sell-by date.Pub Date: March 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9352-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.
Known for her often contentious perspectives, New York Times opinion writer Weiss battles societal Jewish intolerance through lucid prose and a linear playbook of remedies.
While she was vividly aware of anti-Semitism throughout her life, the reality of the problem hit home when an active shooter stormed a Pittsburgh synagogue where her family regularly met for morning services and where she became a bat mitzvah years earlier. The massacre that ensued there further spurred her outrage and passionate activism. She writes that European Jews face a three-pronged threat in contemporary society, where physical, moral, and political fears of mounting violence are putting their general safety in jeopardy. She believes that Americans live in an era when “the lunatic fringe has gone mainstream” and Jews have been forced to become “a people apart.” With palpable frustration, she adroitly assesses the origins of anti-Semitism and how its prevalence is increasing through more discreet portals such as internet self-radicalization. Furthermore, the erosion of civility and tolerance and the demonization of minorities continue via the “casual racism” of political figures like Donald Trump. Following densely political discourses on Zionism and radical Islam, the author offers a list of bullet-point solutions focused on using behavioral and personal action items—individual accountability, active involvement, building community, loving neighbors, etc.—to help stem the tide of anti-Semitism. Weiss sounds a clarion call to Jewish readers who share her growing angst as well as non-Jewish Americans who wish to arm themselves with the knowledge and intellectual tools to combat marginalization and defuse and disavow trends of dehumanizing behavior. “Call it out,” she writes. “Especially when it’s hard.” At the core of the text is the author’s concern for the health and safety of American citizens, and she encourages anyone “who loves freedom and seeks to protect it” to join with her in vigorous activism.
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-593-13605-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2019
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