A bold but not always appealing blueprint for the future.
A new treatise that urges educational overhaul, political inequality, and atheism as potential strategies for revitalizing civilization.
Software engineer and product manager Wilensky surveys fundamental aspects of modern society that he feels are desperately in need of a rethink. Chief among them, he asserts, is an educational system that teaches children nothing but conformism and soon-to-be-forgotten factoids; instead, he argues, instructors should stimulate kids’ curiosity and creativity, teach them critical thinking skills, and raise them to be “thinking machines” who “reason reflexively.” Wilensky also condemns religious belief as the fountainhead of irrationality, intolerance, conflict, and so much “false and often foul doctrine” that “religious inculcation…of young children is equivalent to child abuse.” To counter such conformism, he recommends “changing the environment” so that everything children are exposed to “reflects in some way a worldview embracing science and reason, while at the same time rejecting religion and belief in the supernatural.” The author also takes issue with one-person-one-vote democracy, which he says yields a “mediocracy” in which ignorant people are manipulated into electing corrupt hacks. Wilensky presents his opinions in lucid, plainspoken, but high-minded prose: “It may sound obvious, but we need to make a conscious effort at every turn of our lives to be more virtuous, compassionate human beings.” He offers some engaging explanations of complex concepts, such as the Darwinian evolution of human moral intuition and the falseness of unfalsifiable arguments, and he explores some imaginative potential reforms, such as teaching all kids chess and debate skills to sharpen their wits. Sometimes, though, Wilensky’s drive to optimize society launches into dystopian notions that many readers will perceive as incompatible with freedom, such as a requirement to obtain a parenting license to have children and an elitist electoral system in which a so-called superb class of voters, who score high on critical-thinking tests, have votes that count more than those of people the author calls “subpar.” Such ideas are likely to strike readers as alienating and even frightening.
A bold but not always appealing blueprint for the future.Pub Date: Jan. 11, 2025
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 202
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A hopeful civic sermon favoring inspiration over concrete prescriptions.
A New Jersey senator’s moral manifesto.
Booker situates his narrative in the wake of his 2025 record-breaking 25-hour stand on the Senate floor, an act of physical endurance and moral insistence that serves as its animating example. Though not framed as memoir, the episode implicitly positions Booker himself as a model of the virtues he argues are essential to democratic life. Organized around 10 qualities, including agency, vulnerability, truth, perseverance, and grace, the book advances a clear thesis. “In this book, I argue that many Americans who came before us, and many among us today, have consistently proven that virtues are practical: They expand our power, deepen our sense of belonging, and equip us to endure and ultimately prevail.” Booker illustrates this claim through figures such as the late U.S. Rep. John Lewis, whose willingness to endure sacrifice for principle anchors the book’s moral lineage, and Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, whose composure under public scrutiny is presented as an example of dignity as civic strength. These portraits reinforce Booker’s belief that character, sustained over time, can shape public life, even when political outcomes remain uncertain or incomplete. He supplements these examples with personal stories drawn from family, faith, and community, delivered with emotional conviction and a tone that remains affirming and carefully calibrated. Much of the narrative reads like an expansive commencement address, earnest and reassuring, offering moral affirmation at moments when readers might reasonably expect sharper confrontation. That rhetorical choice ultimately defines the book’s limits. Booker acknowledges political conflict and compromise, but rarely examines them in depth, and while urging leaders to take moral risks, he avoids sustained reflection on how some of his own political decisions have tested the virtues he promotes. The result is a principled but self-conscious work that affirms shared values while offering little guidance for navigating power and accountability.
A hopeful civic sermon favoring inspiration over concrete prescriptions.Pub Date: March 24, 2026
ISBN: 9781250436733
Page Count: 272
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: March 24, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2026
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
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