As the charged title suggests, Bolick presents a polemic admitting of no debate, and his language is carefully weighted against counterargument. He mentions, for instance, his experiences lobbying in California to ratify a voucher system for children ``that would allow their parents to secure a decent education for them outside the failed public-school system,'' without ever saying why that system should be deemed a failure or what constitutes ``decent'' education. Bolick has made a career of fighting quotas as an attorney; he served in the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission during Ronald Reagan's second term, when, to his disgust, he learned that his employers ``were less concerned with the plight of white firefighters victimized by reverse discrimination than with those who had been left behind by the civil rights revolution.'' Having been caught in the L.A. riots following the Rodney King verdict, Bolick concludes, by a circuitous train of logic, that civil rights remedies have no bearing on inner-city lives; those remedies, he argues, never trickle down to those who deserve them, but only ``reinforce the propensity of individuals to define themselves in terms of their race'' in a nation that purports to be color-blind. Nowhere does the author examine why affirmative action policies were thought advisable in the first place. Instead, he sees the continuing victimization of the deserving white majority in existing federal law, with worse to come: ``Quietly but ominously,'' he writes, ``the Clinton administration has set its civil rights policies on a radical course permeated by race-consciousness, brazenly breaking candidate Bill Clinton's `new Democrat' assurances that he would pursue a politics of moderation and healing.'' Given that affirmative action policies have supporters and opponents of all ideological stripes, Clint owes readers a more deliberate appraisal.
Pub Date: March 20, 1996
ISBN: 0-882577-27-2
Page Count: 176
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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