A thoughtful and thorough examination of the intersection of public policy and ideology.
A debut book examines the connection between political progressivism and the practice of eugenics.
As Reilly explains, eugenics began not as an aggressive program of social engineering, but as a response to monumental advancements in technology and science. In addition, the original 20th-century advocates of eugenics, albeit infected with a bout of excessive exuberance, were largely motivated by the best of intentions. But later, eugenics became beholden to radical ideologies, which were animated by darker motivations. For example, Nazi racialism and global attempts at population control are the genealogical descendants of eugenics untethered from any sense of political moderation or a cautious respect for the sanctity of human life. Many readers will likely be surprised to learn how ubiquitous such programs were, even under the supervision of widely respectable institutions and leaders: “Even under the Reagan administration in 1984, an auditor found that USAID was supporting abortions, the imposition of penalties for high birth rates, and payment of financial rewards for sterilization in five countries.” The emphasis of the book is not on the science of eugenics per se, but the marriage between its advocacy and the ideals of modern progressivism. Infatuated with the goal of societal perfection, and science as the means to achieving it, progressivism gradually became insensitive both to individual rights and the limits of human nature. Reilly’s prose is thankfully more journalistic than academic, and a full appreciation of the book does not require a prior understanding of eugenics and its fraught history. For the most part, he avoids any axe-grinding political commitments, although his analysis of more recent versions of progressivism is a bit heavy-handed, especially his views of their assault on traditional values. And a more historically searching view of the relationship between modern, liberal progressivism and an ideology as illiberal as Nazism would have deepened the study. Finally, Reilly makes a plea at the conclusion of the volume for the religiously inclined, especially Christians, to unite against social engineering, but never fully fleshes out what that response should entail. His study remains a provocative and accessible one, though, that forces the reader to reconsider the parameters of contentious debates like abortion and stem cell research.
A thoughtful and thorough examination of the intersection of public policy and ideology.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 159
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 13, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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