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
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
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BOOK REVIEW
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BOOK TO SCREEN
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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