Despite its limitations, a serious and provocative Middle East assessment.
Using chess pieces, this political work analyzes the maddening complexity of the Middle East and America’s foreign policy regarding the region.
At the heart of Buonocore’s thoughtful and wide-ranging assessment of Middle Eastern politics is the game of chess as a metaphor: “The Middle East is a 3.5 million-square-mile chessboard.” Along these lines, the United States is the queen—the “all powerful, all reaching piece”—whose fate the entire game rests on. China and Russia are knights—“disruptive” and “nimble,” if limited in the reach of their powers. Turkey and Israel are bishops, the former more important than Saudi Arabia given its military might and the latter a nuclear power with the backing of the queen. Iran and Egypt are rooks—largely valuable because of their historical ability to endure—while Britain and France are merely pawns, limited in the extension of their powers, still relying on old, outdated foreign policies. The prohibitive restrictions of the illustrative schemata should be obvious, and the author freely admits his unsophisticated understanding of chess strategy. But his analysis is far more nuanced than his gimmicky employment of a metaphorical conceit—he admirably believes that answers lie “in the distant past.” Furthermore, while he contends the “end-state” for the region cannot yet be confidently surmised, he sees no way for the U.S. to safely withdraw: “Whether we like it or not, whether it suits political messaging or not, we are in it for the long run. Sustained engagement to build trust is the only way forward. The Queen has an appointment with the history of the Middle East, and it must keep that appointment.” Buonocore concedes his editor and some book critics call his writing style “verbose, flowery, arabesque, and prone to hyperboles” and say that he avoids “extensive details”—these are not minor failings. Still, he has considerable experience in the region, including as a reserve foreign area officer in the Navy, and that worldly background certainly shows in the depth of his analysis.
Despite its limitations, a serious and provocative Middle East assessment.Pub Date: Nov. 24, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-73585-350-5
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Notable Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2021
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
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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