An immensely stimulating canter through a major segment of Western political tradition.
A bracing history of two-plus centuries of modern Western conservative thought.
A companion to his well-received Liberalism (2014), Fawcett’s latest is as readable and comprehensive as its predecessor. The author, an editor and correspondent at the Economist for more than 30 years, begins with late-18th-century thinkers Edmund Burke and Joseph de Maistre, using them as examples, respectively, of moderate and radical conservatism. This motif—of different strands of conservatism—pervades the narrative until Fawcett ends with today’s “hard right.” While many familiar figures fill the survey, part of the narrative’s strength lies in the author’s exhumation of long-forgotten conservative thinkers, including William Mallock, Charles Hodge, August Rehberg, and F.H. Bradley, among many others. While explanation of the thinking of others is Fawcett’s strong suit, he never fails to offer criticisms of the thought and actions of those he believes warrant them. Fair toward everyone while skeptical about many, he’s alarmed by those who’ve recently joined the “rightward rush from the liberal-democratic status quo.” The narrative suffers somewhat from a lack of more information about such influential conservative thinkers as Samuel P. Huntington and Robert A. Nisbet, but the author’s broad scope and inclusivity allow him to effectively examine not only the genuine contribution of modern conservative thought, but also the unfortunate results of a variety of relevant historical currents—especially regarding the far right today. “As a left-wing liberal,” writes Fawcett, “I do not claim that this history is neutral. I trust it is objective. I have tried to avoid two standbys of political writing, celebration and caricature.” Ultimately, it’s hard to argue with the author’s concern about the recent darkening of conservatism and its surrender of the high ground of thought and action. He concludes with useful appendices on the sources of conservatism, its principal keywords and concepts, and a 60-page, detailed gazetteer of its leading figures.
An immensely stimulating canter through a major segment of Western political tradition.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-691-17410-5
Page Count: 514
Publisher: Princeton Univ.
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
A clearly delineated guide to finally eradicate poverty in America.
A thoughtful program for eradicating poverty from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Evicted.
“America’s poverty is not for lack of resources,” writes Desmond. “We lack something else.” That something else is compassion, in part, but it’s also the lack of a social system that insists that everyone pull their weight—and that includes the corporations and wealthy individuals who, the IRS estimates, get away without paying upward of $1 trillion per year. Desmond, who grew up in modest circumstances and suffered poverty in young adulthood, points to the deleterious effects of being poor—among countless others, the precarity of health care and housing (with no meaningful controls on rent), lack of transportation, the constant threat of losing one’s job due to illness, and the need to care for dependent children. It does not help, Desmond adds, that so few working people are represented by unions or that Black Americans, even those who have followed the “three rules” (graduate from high school, get a full-time job, wait until marriage to have children), are far likelier to be poor than their White compatriots. Furthermore, so many full-time jobs are being recast as contracted, fire-at-will gigs, “not a break from the norm as much as an extension of it, a continuation of corporations finding new ways to limit their obligations to workers.” By Desmond’s reckoning, besides amending these conditions, it would not take a miracle to eliminate poverty: about $177 billion, which would help end hunger and homelessness and “make immense headway in driving down the many agonizing correlates of poverty, like violence, sickness, and despair.” These are matters requiring systemic reform, which will in turn require Americans to elect officials who will enact that reform. And all of us, the author urges, must become “poverty abolitionists…refusing to live as unwitting enemies of the poor.” Fortune 500 CEOs won’t like Desmond’s message for rewriting the social contract—which is precisely the point.
A clearly delineated guide to finally eradicate poverty in America.Pub Date: March 21, 2023
ISBN: 9780593239919
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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