Slightly alarmist, but necessarily so—required reading for conscientious citizens and a complement to Digital Destiny by...
An eye-opening examination of the ever-increasing power wielded by big media conglomerates.
There is a crisis going on behind the scenes of nearly every form of American media, according to Klinenberg (Heat Wave, 2003), but it’s one that average Americans aren’t likely to read about in their local newspaper, see on TV or hear about on the radio. As certain members of the FCC (supported by the Bush administration) seek to further deregulate the media industry, consumers are finding themselves with fewer sources of news, particularly important local news. Canned, prerecorded DJs dominate the airwaves; newspapers owned by mega-corporations are laying off many reporters who cover local beats (and are loathe to criticize big businesses that support them with advertising revenue); and what were once local TV broadcasts are now often farmed out to other locations, and stations are being forced to use prepackaged press videos cleverly disguised as news. Even more disturbing, notes the author, is the amount of money media lobbyists have at their disposal, money that may even be powerful enough to smother the last remaining bastion of democracy: the Internet. He hypothesizes that the day is near when service providers will be able to charge website owners a fee to provide content at high speeds—and block or considerably slow access to content on sites whose owners won’t pony up. Clear Channel and Tribune Company lead a cadre of mustache-twirling villains, while various grassroots activists and dissenting FCC commissioners Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein play the role of Don Quixote. There’s a sea of acronyms and interwoven relationships to navigate, but Klinenberg’s thorough reporting and cogent analysis clarify the complex ways in which media companies have become intertwined over recent years.
Slightly alarmist, but necessarily so—required reading for conscientious citizens and a complement to Digital Destiny by Jeff Chester (2006).Pub Date: Jan. 9, 2007
ISBN: 0-8050-7819-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Metropolitan/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2006
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
