Morris makes a solid case for polls as tools to give voice to the people while allowing that improvements are needed.
A data journalist for the Economist explains his much-derided and now much-distrusted profession.
In the 2020 presidential election, a poll taken by ABC News and the Washington Post projected that Joe Biden would defeat Donald Trump in Wisconsin by a towering 17 percentage points. Ultimately, Biden’s lead was less than 1 point. How did the pollsters get it so wrong? In 2016, how did everyone who called the election for Hillary Clinton misread the signs? Morris looks deep inside the often flawed assumptions of the pollsters and efforts to overcome the mathematical flaws inherent in their surveys, from sample bias to margins of error. Before doing so, however, he defends the use of polls as an important mechanism to give voice to voters in a representative democracy. “We must understand that both the concept and the significance of public opinion took root gradually, and their development continues to this day,” he writes. When properly conducted, he adds, a poll can have the force of a referendum, given that a key assumption of democracies is that the voice of the collective is stronger than that of the individual. But how to assemble that collective to give meaningful results? As Morris notes, some of the problem lies on the side of the pollsters, who must attain samples sufficiently large and diverse to represent as many demographics as possible. Some, though, lies on the side of those being polled, who, it seems, tend not to answer truthfully, especially when they suspect that the poll is biased toward one end or another. In the 2020 election, right-leaning voters tended not to respond to polls at all, again leading to projections of a Biden landslide. Those readers with a bent for statistics will take interest in the author’s descriptions of such matters as sampling errors, the law of large numbers, and the corrective tools of smoothing and aggregation.
Morris makes a solid case for polls as tools to give voice to the people while allowing that improvements are needed.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-393-86697-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: April 25, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2022
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 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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