The myriad topics sometimes blur together, but the discussion is astute and relevant.
The follow-up to Targeting Iran (2007).
In a Q&A format about the continued demonization of Iran by the U.S., Barsamian enlists the expertise of five longtime observers: Noam Chomsky, Azadeh Moaveni, Trita Parsi, Ervand Abrahamian, and Nader Hashemi. In the wake of the Trump administration's canceling of Obama's Iran nuclear deal (aka the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, adopted in 2015) as well as the recent U.S. assassination of a prominent Iranian general, Barsamian gets at the key to the deterioration of the relationship between the two nations. His expert contributors dig into a variety of topics: the general breakdown in relations since Iran’s Islamic Revolution of 1979; the failure of U.S. sanctions; the gains in education and civil rights for women in Iran even as censorship and repression have tightened; and the outsized role of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. Parsi, who advised Obama on the JCPOA deal, notes the role Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had in unwittingly pushing the agreement along: "He thought that he could force the U.S. to take military action, but he underestimated Obama and he misread the American public, which has been adamantly against another war." Abrahamian, author and professor emeritus of Iranian and Middle Eastern history and politics, offers a wise overview of Iran, its history, and political makeup. Longtime MIT professor Chomsky argues that the U.S. has no right to impose sanctions on Iran or force it to "capitulate" in any way. Furthermore, he notes, the U.S. under Trump is now “the world’s leading rogue state.” Moaveni, a journalist, writer (Lipstick Jihad, etc.), and academic, speaks on women and society, and Hashemi, director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Denver, discusses Iranian politics and the reform movement, noting that “we are now witnessing the worst moment in U.S.–Iran relations in over forty years.”
The myriad topics sometimes blur together, but the discussion is astute and relevant.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-87286-804-5
Page Count: 200
Publisher: City Lights
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2020
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
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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