A good choice for politics watchers, especially as the 2024 presidential race heats up.
A journalistic account of the uneasy alliance between the progressive and establishment wings of the Democratic Party.
Drawing on hundreds of interviews with party insiders, reporters Walker and Luppen trace the origins of the modern progressive movement and the strategizing that has brought it to the fore. That movement didn’t flourish under the Obama presidency; Obama, inherently cautious, held to a centrist policy, and even though Joe Biden foresaw Hillary Clinton’s loss in 2016, Obama backed her. For his part, Biden also recognized that the Obama coalition of voters was fragile, and he’s been notably open to the work of building alliances between those with left and centrist tendencies. Even so, the authors write, “The party continues to feud over whether to present a transformative progressive message tuned to their base or a moderate one designed to cater to independents and have a broader appeal.” Interestingly, some of that bridge-building owes to Obama, who, learning a lesson from Clinton’s loss, “wanted to ensure [that] the two factions of the party could build a solid alliance to take on Trump.” Whether the bridges will endure remains to be seen, but the approach has shown results. For example, the failure of the “red wave” in the 2022 midterm elections was one sign, even if a Democratic bulwark—namely, the state of New York—lost four seats to Republicans, owing to the factors that have kept Democrats from winning elsewhere: “internecine disputes, influxes of Republican megadonor cash, and the steady barrage of right-leaning media machinery.” The authors close with a gimlet-eyed analysis of where matters stand, with Bernie Sanders voicing particular concern that the party stands at a crossroads of representing the working class or staying “a corporately controlled party beholden to your wealthy campaign contributors.”
A good choice for politics watchers, especially as the 2024 presidential race heats up.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 2024
ISBN: 9781324020387
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
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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