A well-informed civics-driven guide arguing that state legislatures, not Washington, will shape America’s political future.
A veteran state legislator argues that the real battlefield for American democracy lies in state government.
A former New York state senator and longtime aide to U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer, Squadron brings insider experience to this debut effort, arguing that Americans have fundamentally misunderstood where political power resides. “On the things people care about most, the state is almost always responsible,” he writes. His central aim is to redirect civic attention away from Washington gridlock and toward state legislatures, the arenas where redistricting, voting rules, and policy frameworks are shaped long before reaching the national stage. At one point, underscoring the labyrinthine nature of state governance, he notes that “Between them, there are fifty-one different election laws,” a reminder of how fragmented and consequential state authority has become. The book is laid out in three broad sections. The opening section serves as a civics-heavy foundation, explaining how state governments function and how their decisions ripple upward into federal law and Supreme Court rulings. The middle chapters shift toward the mechanics of power: redistricting strategies, legislative alliances, and the steady growth of political advantage. The final portion reads as a kind of playbook, urging readers to fund, organize, or even run for state office. These arguments prove especially urgent within the context Trump’s second administration, where executive power and judicial appointments have intensified ideological divisions. Squadron repeatedly points to long-standing Republican efforts to build institutional leverage through conservative policy organizations and advocacy networks, as well as think tanks, such as the Heritage Foundation or the Koch brothers’ Cato Institute, that have refined messaging, drafted model legislation, and steadily influenced statehouses across the country. Read in sequence, the book serves as a kind of handbook for political engagement. Yet in its first half especially, the tone somewhat resembles an extended civics lesson, thorough and relatable, though occasionally dense with procedural detail. For motivated readers, that density provides an essential foundation rather than a barrier.
A well-informed civics-driven guide arguing that state legislatures, not Washington, will shape America’s political future.Pub Date: June 9, 2026
ISBN: 9781638933854
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Zando
Review Posted Online: April 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2026
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.
An Egyptian Canadian journalist writes searchingly of this time of war.
“Rules, conventions, morals, reality itself: all exist so long as their existence is convenient to the preservation of power.” So writes El Akkad, who goes on to state that one of the demands of modern power is that those subject to it must imagine that some group of people somewhere are not fully human. El Akkad’s pointed example is Gaza, the current destruction of which, he writes, is causing millions of people around the world to examine the supposedly rules-governed, democratic West and declare, “I want nothing to do with this.” El Akkad, author of the novel American War (2017), discerns hypocrisy and racism in the West’s defense of Ukraine and what he views as indifference toward the Palestinian people. No stranger to war zones himself—El Akkad was a correspondent in Afghanistan and Iraq—he writes with grim matter-of-factness about murdered children, famine, and the deliberate targeting of civilians. With no love for Zionism lost, he offers an equally harsh critique of Hamas, yet another one of the “entities obsessed with violence as an ethos, brutal in their treatment of minority groups who in their view should not exist, and self-decreed to be the true protectors of an entire religion.” Taking a global view, El Akkad, who lives in the U.S., finds almost every government and society wanting, and not least those, he says, that turn away and pretend not to know, behavior that we’ve seen before and that, in the spirit of his title, will one day be explained away until, in the end, it comes down to “a quiet unheard reckoning in the winter of life between the one who said nothing, did nothing, and their own soul.”
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593804148
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The choir is sure to enjoy this impassioned preaching on familiar progressive themes.
Essays on current political topics by a high-profile actor and activist.
Milano explains in an introduction that she began writing this uneven collection while dealing with a severe case of Covid-19 and suffering from "persistent brain fog.” In the first essay, "On Being Unapologetically Fucked Up,” the author begins by fuming over a February 2019 incident in which she compared MAGA caps worn by high school kids to KKK hoods. She then runs through a grab bag of flash-point news items (police shootings, border crimes, sexual predators in government), deploying the F-bomb with abandon and concluding, "What I know is that fucked up is as fundamental a state of the world as night and day. But I know there is better. I know that ‘less fucked up’ is a state we can live in.” The second essay, "Believe Women," discusses Milano’s seminal role in the MeToo movement; unfortunately, it is similarly conversational in tone and predictable in content. One of the few truly personal essays, "David," about the author's marriage, refutes the old saw about love meaning never having to say you're sorry, replacing it with "Love means you can suggest a national sex strike and your husband doesn't run away screaming." Milano assumes, perhaps rightly, that her audience is composed of followers and fans; perhaps these readers will know what she is talking about in the seemingly allegorical "By Any Other Name," about her bad experience with a certain rosebush. "Holy shit, giving birth sucked," begins one essay. "Words are weird, right?" begins the next. "Welp, this is going to piss some of you off. Hang in there," opens a screed about cancel culture—though she’s entirely correct that “it’s childish, divisive, conceited, and Trumpian to its core.” By the end, however, Milano's intelligence, compassion, integrity, and endurance somewhat compensate for her lack of literary polish.
The choir is sure to enjoy this impassioned preaching on familiar progressive themes.Pub Date: Oct. 26, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-18329-8
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
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