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 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
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Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
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