A bold book aimed at Republicans that could be profitably read by Democrats as well.
A blueprint shows how the Republican Party can woo millennial voters and regain its relevance.
Conservative philosophy is usually at a disadvantage when it comes to courting young voters because a principled skepticism about progress chafes against a youthful romanticism. Nevertheless, in this book, Scaros (Understanding the Constitution, 2011) fashions a plan for the rejuvenation of what he feels is a party ailing from a disconnect with younger voters. The author argues that Republicans need to both refine and embrace the core principles that underline their perspective: liberty, individual responsibility, economic opportunity, and moral values. Rather than diffidently water down their political attachments, he writes, they should proudly proclaim them. But he also argues that they should choose candidates that are more likable and less angry or they risk needlessly alienating potentially sympathetic voters. The author consistently chides the party for eschewing compromise, which is historically essential to American political life: “Republicans might not realize that refusing to compromise is childish and downright un-American. Our nation was built on compromise so much so that it would be appropriate to call it the American States of Compromise.” Following this sentiment, Scaros advocates various compromises without a corresponding abandonment of convictions. For example, he counsels Republicans to reach out beyond conservative media outlets to more liberal ones. He outlines several issues he contends Republicans can reclaim, including religion, national security, populism, and race. The author also sketches some general policy perspectives on hot topics like gun control, taxation, energy independence, and education. Some of his provocative proposals seem wildly implausible; he believes, in exchange for higher salaries, that teachers will jettison not only tenure, but unions as well. Still, Scaros skillfully updates the party’s agenda without transforming it into something unrecognizable. A presidential historian and attorney, Scaros draws from a deep wellspring of knowledge, but his greatest asset remains his consistent pragmatism. He has a strong political viewpoint, but it’s not freighted with calcified ideology. Politically minded voters from either side of the aisle could benefit from his example of intellectual bipartisanship.
A bold book aimed at Republicans that could be profitably read by Democrats as well.Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5127-1324-4
Page Count: 134
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 17, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
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
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