Passionate, important reportage on a tragic era in American history from an author who lived through it.
A definitive report on how crack cocaine decimated the Black community throughout the 1980s and ’90s.
Journalist Ramsey chronicles two devastating decades when crack use was rampant and many entities turned a blind eye to the nationwide catastrophe. The author vividly recalls his adolescence in Columbus, Ohio, with “kids who grew up like me—poor and Black in the midst of the crack epidemic.” When the epidemic finally subsided, Ramsey and many other survivors were left with “speculation and innuendo.” In 2015, he began deeply researching “the facts of crack—what it was, where it came from, and how it spread.” The author compassionately profiles four individuals whose lives were affected by crack: Elgin Swift, a White man who became an ambitious, self-made success story despite being raised by a neglectful addict father; Lennie Woodley, a former crack addict and Los Angeles sex worker who became a substance abuse counselor; Kurt Schmoke, the first Black mayor of Baltimore, who was both praised and criticized for his early plans to defuse the drug war with decriminalization; and Shawn McCray, a former Newark drug trafficker–turned–upstanding community leader. Interwoven with these intimately depicted, gritty stories is the history of Black America from the 1960s to the end of the 20th century. Ramsey shows how crack infiltrated and nearly snuffed out entire marginalized communities while an indifferent government stood by and legitimized its demonization. Though he acknowledges that survivors of the epidemic (particularly Black and brown people) rarely discuss it, the author dutifully shines much-needed light on this searingly traumatic ordeal. Each profile ends with the possibilities of hope and change, and Ramsey also dispenses provocative, convincing commentary on criminal legal system reform, social justice, the failures of drug policy, and the complicated relationship between disenfranchised communities and drug abuse in America.
Passionate, important reportage on a tragic era in American history from an author who lived through it.Pub Date: July 11, 2023
ISBN: 9780525511809
Page Count: 448
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2023
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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