A detailed analysis of the tumultuous past decade for CDFIs, aimed at a narrow audience.
Rosenthal and Archer-Rosenthal highlight the unique circumstances faced by community development institutions over the past decade.
The authors have many years of experience in community development financial institutions—organizations such as community banks and credit unions that offer financial services to underprivileged and underserved communities. Rosenthal established the Office of Financial Empowerment at the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in 2012, and consultant Archer-Rosenthal has worked with numerous CDFIs. The pair highlight the unique challenges faced by these organizations in recent years. President Donald Trump’s administrations, they point out, have been inhospitable toward such organizations, even pushing for their dissolution. The Covid-19 pandemic created a set of overlapping crises, they write, that deeply affected the CDFI industry. Simultaneously, they note, the killing of George Floyd in 2020 led to a cultural social-justice awakening that highlighted the significance of CDFIs, thus increasing the flow of private resources to these institutions. Moreover, they say, Covid-era resources led to an influx of $12 billion, with most coming from the Paycheck Protection Program, which provided massive federal subsidies to institutions in need. The authors describe CDFIs as financial “first responders” who helped secure communities’ financial stability during the pandemic. The authors also describe how CDFIs have weathered the storm of President Trump’s latest administration, which has worked to divest federal money from CDFIs as well as stop diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts. Overall, this book will be a useful and tangible resource for readers heavily involved in the world of nonprofits, credit unions, and the like, featuring such elements as a history of the CDFI certification process and an exploration of CDFIs with environmentalist goals; it may also appeal to aficionados of financial-sector histories. Its usefulness to those outside these groups, however, will likely be limited. At its core, the work feels more like a long position paper than a book for a general readership; as such, the prose tends to be repetitive, with the same key concepts highlighted to the point of exhaustion for casual readers.
A detailed analysis of the tumultuous past decade for CDFIs, aimed at a narrow audience.Pub Date: Feb. 23, 2026
ISBN: 9781038357243
Page Count: 462
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
