Both activists and prognosticators will find Freedlander’s reporting valuable.
A frontline report on millennial and postmillennial politics, as exemplified by the representative from the Bronx.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, aka AOC, was famously the youngest person in her congressional class and “rose from the life of an adrift twenty-something making her way in New York to an overnight sensation…becoming an icon of pop culture in the process.” AOC seems sui generis, but, as journalist Freedlander notes, she came to office thanks to the efforts of many allies and a changing political dynamic that cast her entrenched, long-serving Democratic opponent as an out-of-touch member of the political establishment—and never mind that he had once been viewed as a party progressive. The chief impetus for AOC’s rise, writes the author, was Bernie Sanders, who, as a democratic socialist, “ran one of the most vocally left-wing campaigns in US political history.” Sanders also spurred a democratic socialist movement that, though identified with AOC and fellow representatives Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, is now widespread. Freedlander notes that there are “democratic socialists in the Maryland legislature and in the city councils of Denver, Philadelphia, and Seattle,” among other places. Some of the other allies that furthered the movement were the activists of Occupy Wall Street, the protestors at Standing Rock, the Black Lives Matter organization, and Our Revolution, which Sanders’ backers founded after he ceded the primary to Hillary Clinton. On the larger scale, Freedlander examines underlying political and demographic trends, from an activist’s recognition that “we lose elections because a lot of our ideas are not popular” to the younger electoral cohort’s shift to the left. That shift is so pronounced that even if they become more conservative in later years, they will still be well to the left of older people today—which has countless implications for the politics of the future.
Both activists and prognosticators will find Freedlander’s reporting valuable.Pub Date: March 30, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-8070-3643-3
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 24, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2021
Maher calls out idiocy wherever he sees it, with a comedic delivery that veers between a stiletto and a sledgehammer.
The comedian argues that the arts of moderation and common sense must be reinvigorated.
Some people are born snarky, some become snarky, and some have snarkiness thrust upon them. Judging from this book, Maher—host of HBO’s Real Time program and author of The New New Rules and When You Ride Alone, You Ride With bin Laden—is all three. As a comedian, he has a great deal of leeway to make fun of people in politics, and he often delivers hilarious swipes with a deadpan face. The author describes himself as a traditional liberal, with a disdain for Republicans (especially the MAGA variety) and a belief in free speech and personal freedom. He claims that he has stayed much the same for more than 20 years, while the left, he argues, has marched toward intolerance. He sees an addiction to extremism on both sides of the aisle, which fosters the belief that anyone who disagrees with you must be an enemy to be destroyed. However, Maher has always displayed his own streaks of extremism, and his scorched-earth takedowns eventually become problematic. The author has something nasty to say about everyone, it seems, and the sarcastic tone starts after more than 300 pages. As has been the case throughout his career, Maher is best taken in small doses. The book is worth reading for the author’s often spot-on skewering of inept politicians and celebrities, but it might be advisable to occasionally dip into it rather than read the whole thing in one sitting. Some parts of the text are hilarious, but others are merely insulting. Maher is undeniably talented, but some restraint would have produced a better book.
Maher calls out idiocy wherever he sees it, with a comedic delivery that veers between a stiletto and a sledgehammer.Pub Date: May 21, 2024
ISBN: 9781668051351
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An exquisitely original celebration of American Blackness.
A potent series of “notes” paints a multidimensional picture of Blackness in America.
Throughout the book, which mixes memoir, history, literary theory, and art, Sharpe—the chair of Black studies at York University in Toronto and author of the acclaimed book In the Wake: On Blackness and Being—writes about everything from her family history to the everyday trauma of American racism. Although most of the notes feature the author’s original writing, she also includes materials like photographs, copies of letters she received, responses to a Twitter-based crowdsourcing request, and definitions of terms collected from colleagues and friends (“preliminary entries toward a dictionary of untranslatable blackness”). These diverse pieces coalesce into a multifaceted examination of the ways in which the White gaze distorts Blackness and perpetuates racist violence. Sharpe’s critique is not limited to White individuals, however. She includes, for example, a disappointing encounter with a fellow Black female scholar as well as critical analysis of Barack Obama’s choice to sing “Amazing Grace” at the funeral of the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, who was killed in a hate crime at the Mother Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. With distinct lyricism and a firm but tender tone, Sharpe executes every element of this book flawlessly. Most impressive is the collagelike structure, which seamlessly moves among an extraordinary variety of forms and topics. For example, a photograph of the author’s mother in a Halloween costume transitions easily into an introduction to Roland Barthes’ work Camera Lucida, which then connects just as smoothly to a memory of watching a White visitor struggle with the reality presented by the Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama. “Something about this encounter, something about seeing her struggle…feels appropriate to the weight of this history,” writes the author. It is a testament to Sharpe’s artistry that this incredibly complex text flows so naturally.
An exquisitely original celebration of American Blackness.Pub Date: April 25, 2023
ISBN: 9780374604486
Page Count: 392
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2023
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