A searing attack on historical injustices.
Beyond catastrophes.
Accounts of epidemics are a respectable publishing genre, but journalist and science historian Bonhomme uses them as a springboard for exploring inequality. Cholera, a major 19th-century killer, seems to be the subject of the first chapter, yet in a preview of what follows, Bonhomme opens in 1857 New Orleans, where a white physician lectured a meeting of the New Orleans Academy of Science on the supposed inferiority of the Black race. The audience listened respectfully. Although Bonhomme summarizes the nature of cholera, the purported causes (all wrong), and its treatment (always useless, often harmful) according to antebellum medical science, she describes the unspeakable conditions under which enslaved people lived. Readers will realize that this is not a history of epidemics but a fierce polemic arguing that minorities and the poor suffer when diseases rage because governments and the medical profession give them short shrift. The second chapter focuses on Africa during the colonial period. Sleeping sickness was rampant, and European physicians, eager to apply the latest science to conquer it, forced indigenous victims to undergo experiments without their permission, prescribing toxic drugs forbidden in Europe, and failed. The author’s discussion of Ebola emphasizes the ravages of colonialism, which left African nations with inadequate medical care systems. Readers may be surprised to learn that Ebola, mostly fatal in Africa, is curable when treated in a modern hospital. The 1918 influenza pandemic, meanwhile, plays a modest role in a compelling account of how authors, notably Virginia Woolf, dealt with illness by writing. “In her letters to family and friends,” writes Bonhomme, “she reflected on her pain, noting, ‘My hand shakes no longer, but my mind vibrates uncomfortably, as it always does after an incursion of visitors; unexpected, and slightly unsympathetic.’ Even when she suffered, Woolf’s beautiful prose pulls one to her world.”
A searing attack on historical injustices.Pub Date: March 11, 2025
ISBN: 9781982197834
Page Count: 320
Publisher: One Signal/Atria
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2025
A powerful reiteration of principles—and some fresh ideas—from the longest-serving independent in congressional history.
Another chapter in a long fight against inequality.
Building on his Fighting Oligarchy tour, which this year drew 280,000 people to rallies in red and blue states, Sanders amplifies his enduring campaign for economic fairness. The Vermont senator offers well-timed advice for combating corruption and issues a robust plea for national soul-searching. His argument rests on alarming data on the widening wealth gap’s impact on democracy. Bolstered by a 2010 Supreme Court decision that removed campaign finance limits, “100 billionaire families spent $2.6 billion” on 2024 elections. Sanders focuses on the Trump administration and congressional Republicans, describing their enactment of the “Big Beautiful Bill,” with its $1 trillion in tax breaks for the richest Americans and big social safety net cuts, as the “largest transfer of wealth” in living memory. But as is his custom, he spreads the blame, dinging Democrats for courting wealthy donors while ignoring the “needs and suffering” of the working class. “Trump filled the political vacuum that the Democrats created,” he writes, a resonant diagnosis. Urging readers not to surrender to despair, Sanders offers numerous legislative proposals. These would empower labor unions, cut the workweek to 32 hours, regulate campaign spending, reduce gerrymandering, and automatically register 18-year-olds to vote. Grassroots supporters can help by running for local office, volunteering with a campaign, and asking educators how to help support public schools. Meanwhile, Sanders asks us “to question the fundamental moral values that underlie” a system that enables “the top 1 percent” to “own more wealth than the bottom 93 percent.” Though his prose sometimes reads like a transcribed speech with built-in applause lines, Sanders’ ideas are specific, clear, and commonsensical. And because it echoes previous statements, his call for collective introspection lands as genuine.
A powerful reiteration of principles—and some fresh ideas—from the longest-serving independent in congressional history.Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2025
ISBN: 9798217089161
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A remarkably thorough and thoughtful case for the reconciliation between science and faith.
A duo of French mathematicians makes the scientific case for God in this nonfiction book.
Since its 2021 French-language publication in Paris, this work by Bolloré and Bonnassies has sold more than 400,000 copies. Now translated into English for the first time by West and Jones, the book offers a new introduction featuring endorsements from a range of scientists and religious leaders, including Nobel Prize-winning astronomers and Roman Catholic cardinals. This appeal to authority, both religious and scientific, distinguishes this volume from a genre of Christian apologetics that tends to reject, rather than embrace, scientific consensus. Central to the book’s argument is that contemporary scientific advancements have undone past emphases on materialist interpretations of the universe (and their parallel doubts of spirituality). According to the authors’ reasoned arguments, what now forms people’s present understanding of the universe—including quantum mechanics, relativity, and the Big Bang—puts “the question of the existence of a creator God back on the table,” given the underlying implications. Einstein’s theory of relativity, for instance, presupposes that if a cause exists behind the origin of the universe, then it must be atemporal, non-spatial, and immaterial. While the book’s contentions related to Christianity specifically, such as its belief in the “indisputable truths contained in the Bible,” may not be as convincing as its broader argument on how the idea of a creator God fits into contemporary scientific understanding, the volume nevertheless offers a refreshingly nuanced approach to the topic. From the work’s outset, the authors (academically trained in math and engineering) reject fundamentalist interpretations of creationism (such as claims that Earth is only 6,000 years old) as “fanciful beliefs” while challenging the philosophical underpinnings of a purely materialist understanding of the universe that may not fit into recent scientific paradigm shifts. Featuring over 500 pages and more than 600 research notes, this book strikes a balance between its academic foundations and an accessible writing style, complemented by dozens of photographs from various sources, diagrams, and charts.
A remarkably thorough and thoughtful case for the reconciliation between science and faith.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9789998782402
Page Count: 562
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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