A proposal for democratic revitalization that’s well presented—and worth considering.
An intriguing thought experiment: What if they held an election and nobody came?
“While electoral representation may have made sense two centuries ago, in a vastly different context and for very different populations, it’s no longer up to the task, especially in modern societies of educated citizens with access to information.” So argues Yale University political scientist Landemore, who, in her native France and elsewhere, has studied referendums and other measures to increase citizen involvement in government and reduce the baneful effects of professional politicians—who, she remarks in passing, are mostly rich white men who seem to be in it for the power and not the service. Thus, elections won’t do the trick: The people who run for office are the problem. Building on William Buckley’s famously acerbic note that he’d rather be governed by the first 2,000 people in the phone book than by the Harvard faculty (Buckley was a Yalie too, of course), Landemore suggests an alternate system in which citizens are drawn by national lottery to deliberate “for extended periods in a parliamentlike institution” on issues such as the housing shortage or assisted suicide. These citizens are to be served with information and expertise by a cadre of civil servants—the dreaded “deep state”—but are otherwise free to formulate their own solutions. Admitting that, as a “radical democrat,” she’s proposing something that’s never been wholly tried, Landemore goes further: If there’s a legislature by lottery, then does electing a president make sense? That said, Landemore recounts examples of citizen democracy in action, as when Icelandic civilians were drafted to write a new constitution. A bonus, she notes, is that while there is certainly disagreement in these processes, there’s nothing of the rancor and polarization that passes for government today.
A proposal for democratic revitalization that’s well presented—and worth considering.Pub Date: Feb. 10, 2026
ISBN: 9780593713983
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Thesis/Penguin
Review Posted Online: Dec. 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
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
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SEEN & HEARD
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
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