Health care policymakers and medical consumers alike will find these arguments urgent—and in dire need of solution.
Caring for those who cannot care for themselves is at a tipping point—and almost certain to reach a catastrophic state.
British sociologist Dowling observes that in the U.K. between 2012 and 2022, the number of 75-year-olds will have increased by 1 million, and their growing needs for care will not cease. However, she writes, “the forces of capital have become less interested in the reproduction of any national labour force.” In other words, the tenor of the current British government is one of retrenchment, austerity, and, more than anything else, privatization. Dowling’s examples and language—as when she asks, “is lifting bins or driving a lorry more of a skill than looking after elderly or vulnerable people?”—are British through and through, but of course the Brexit Party took many of their marching orders from the same people who gave us Donald Trump, including the thought that government should unknot its welfare net and outsource as many social service jobs as possible. The result, writes the author, is that home care—“never a high-status job in the first place” but at least one that was recognized as necessary and respectable—is now turned over to low-paid, hourly workers who are not reimbursed for time spent traveling from patient to patient and are penalized for spending too much time with any given one. That is, if they’re paid at all; Dowling notes that much care work is now performed by family members without remuneration. The austerity regime, argues the author, achieves its legitimacy, such as it has any, “through a denial of the structural reasons why people need welfare in the first place,” when in fact those needs are expanding owing to “the systematic underfunding of social care.” Among the possible remedies she explores are social-impact investing, community care, decentralization of state mechanisms to fit the needs of local populations, and, of course, more money.
Health care policymakers and medical consumers alike will find these arguments urgent—and in dire need of solution.Pub Date: Jan. 26, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-78663-034-6
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Verso
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
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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