A conversational, amusing, instructive look at a landscape too many Americans merely fly over or—if they think of it at...
To the question posed by Thomas Frank’s bestselling What’s the Matter with Kansas? (2004), a journalist responds, much as the Emporia Gazette’s William Allen White did in 1896: “Nothing under the shining sun.”
The Republican River (no, it’s not named after the Party) meanders along the Kansas/Nebraska border, and from the small towns along its banks Boyles (Vile France: Fear, Duplicity, Cowardice and Cheese, 2005, etc.) casually reports for an oftentimes clueless coastal America on the state of political and anthropological affairs. He begins by supplying some geography and history, both personal—the family homestead in Superior, Neb.—and regional—snapshots of pre–Civil War “Bleeding Kansas,” the flood of 1935, the sheer scale of the Midwest as a determinant, the orphan trains that brought 200,000 city kids to the plains between 1853 and 1930. But the author mostly focuses on putting right a number of misconceptions commonly held by cultural elites who never tire of telling Midwesterners what they ought to be thinking and doing. Aren’t all the people “out there” moss-backed Republicans who, unaccountably it seems, vote against their own proper interests? No, voting patterns are not at all monolithic—indeed, they are quite sophisticated. Aren’t all the small towns rapidly depopulating? Yes, though not nearly as quickly as most of the eastern seaboard’s major cities. Aren’t the newspapers dying? The regional dailies, sure, but the local weeklies, specializing in hometown news, are doing quite well. Isn’t Wal-Mart an unalloyed disaster for Main Street? No. Aren’t the people religious fanatics? Yes, from the perspective of a reporter for the AP, NPR or the New York Times. No, if you’re a native accustomed to the Midwest tradition of respect for religious belief, where even a proud Democrat can unashamedly attribute the region’s mostly civil politics to Christ-taught values of love and forgiveness and a deep confidence in the ideas that make democracy work. Except for some occasional vitriol infecting his discussion of the educational, judicial and political establishment, Boyles is a good-natured guide, shaking his head not so much in anger but rather in bemusement at the academics, commentators and rabid partisans who get so much of the Midwest so wrong.
A conversational, amusing, instructive look at a landscape too many Americans merely fly over or—if they think of it at all—misunderstand.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-385-51674-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
