An important and touching account of a community’s struggles against LGBTQ+ discrimination.
A high school music teacher stands to lose his job after being outed as gay by a student in this work about LGBTQ+ rights.
Yared, an attorney, offers this true story about teacher Gerry Crane’s fight to keep his job at a public high school trying to force him out for being gay. The emotionally charged legal and personal fight began in 1995, the same year “Michigan Governor John Engler signed a law banning same-sex marriage and prohibiting the recognition of out-of-state same sex marriage.” Discrimination against LGBTQ+ citizens was legally endorsed, and a culture of homophobia was rife. A student of Crane’s, one he had disciplined, according to the author, obtained the program for the teacher’s ceremonial marriage to his partner, Randy, and shared it with the administration at Byron Center High School. The school, where Crane taught music and was recognized by students and the administration as an excellent teacher and role model, was “located in religiously and politically conservative West Michigan.” The administration used the town’s religious beliefs to fuel a homophobic battle to oust Crane, portraying him as morally unfit because he was gay. Yared rigorously shares the details of Crane’s struggle to defend his personal life and his courageous efforts to stand up to the school’s many attempts to force him to resign. Crane’s initial refusal to leave his teaching position was met with enmity from the town’s bigoted members but also with dedication and love from many of his students. Crane, a deeply religious man, became a champion for his LGBTQ+ students, closeted and fearful to come out in a hostile climate. Yared was formerly on the board of directors of the Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Community Network of West Michigan. In presenting Crane’s inspiring story, the author skillfully depicts the culture of a time when personal protests and supportive communities joined forces against discrimination, paving the way for activists to earn more rights for LGBTQ+ citizens everywhere. The author’s prose is on the anecdotal side, missing opportunities to use rich descriptions to tell this compelling tale. Nevertheless, the moving book serves as a significant contribution to the history of protests that individuals have waged to improve the lives of all LGBTQ+ people.
An important and touching account of a community’s struggles against LGBTQ+ discrimination.Pub Date: Dec. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-73523-710-7
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Penning History Press, LLC
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PERSPECTIVES
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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