Tremendous research demonstrates how “indignity is a form of generalized social violence” corroding democracy.
A sharp critical study of the steady decline of democracy in India.
In a hard-hitting, relentless chronicle of social and political ills, Chowdhury, a Hong Kong–based journalist, and Keane, a professor of politics at the University of Sydney, trace the decomposition of Indian democracy since the hopeful time of independence in August 1947—a process that has accelerated in recent years under Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The great experiment of Indian democracy, forged from staggering diversity and the “polychromatic reality” of Indian society, is now in critical danger. “Weighed down by destitution of heart-breaking proportions,” write the authors, the world’s largest democracy suffers glaring “emergencies” in the societal structure (clean air and water, education, health care, etc.) that have been ignored or underestimated during decades of feeble leadership, leaving tens of millions of impoverished Indians without essential constitutional rights. In an impassioned narrative, the authors move from the first parliamentary general election—“which began in October 1951 and took six months to conduct. It was the grandest show the world had ever seen”—to the most recent, when Modi, with his Hindu-dominant Bharatiya Janata Party, used his money and power to intimidate voters and quell dissent. The authors delineate the heartbreaking collapse of the social fabric and how the pandemic has exposed the abysmal health care system. Most Indians endure “indignities” unheard of in the West, such as rampant pollution, food insecurity, malnutrition, lack of health care and education, especially for girls and women, and even slave labor. While some elections have been effective, especially because the poor have been participating in greater numbers, the recent Modi years demonstrate how money and intimidation dominate the landscape, essentially neutralizing the other arms of government. The authors warn of Modi’s creeping despotism. For example, “in August 2019, with the stroke of a pen, Modi’s government revoked the autonomous status of the restive state of Jammu and Kashmir.” This book sounds an urgent alarm.
Tremendous research demonstrates how “indignity is a form of generalized social violence” corroding democracy.Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-19-884860-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: June 9, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2021
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
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
PERSPECTIVES
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