by E.J. Dionne ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 20, 1996
Washington Post columnist Dionne (Why Americans Hate Politics, 1991) turns his attention to the so-called Republican realignment of the 1994 elections and reaches a surprising conclusion. ``The new radicalism in American politics means that the debate in 1996 and beyond is not simply a contest between political parties,'' Dionne writes, ``It is a confrontation between fundamentally different approaches to economic turbulence, moral uncertainty and international disorder.'' Dionne argues convincingly that there is actually ample precedent for the upheavals affecting the American political scene today; he draws striking parallels with the last third of the 19th century and the rise of the Progressive movement. A shrewd social critic with a good grasp of history, he argues that American politics is undergoing four simultaneous and interlinked crises: The first is the impact of the increasingly globalized economy—downsizing, loss of jobs, benefits, and wages; that in turn leads to a crisis of politics, as government is unable to protect its constituents and offer socioeconomic stability; then, the new economic realities batter the family, precipitating a moral crisis; and finally, the postCold War blues force Americans to face hard questions about the place of their country on the changing map of the world. The problem, he argues, is that politicians and ideologues have used the four crises like a shell game, manipulating one to avoid dealing with another. He traces the rise of disaffected middle-class voters (the ``Anxious Middle''), and offers sterling analyses of why the Clinton administration has failed on the Hill and where the shortcomings of Newt Gingrich's vision lie. Dionne points out that Gingrich ``seeks to define away almost all the problems that Americans want politicians to grapple with''—a recipe for disaster. The 1995 election results suggest that Dionne may be onto something that nobody else has noticed. If the Republican Revolution does indeed stall, Dionne's convincing and acute analysis will have predicted it. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Feb. 20, 1996
ISBN: 0-684-80768-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1995
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by Ta-Nehisi Coates ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 8, 2015
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
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The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
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by Paul Kalanithi ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 19, 2016
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
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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
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