A passionate work about taking action to stop would-be dictators.
Chaleff, the chair emeritus of the nonpartisan Congressional Management Foundation, offers a call for political activism in the face of rising authoritarianism.
In these pages, the author asserts that leaders, including would-be autocrats, are powerless without followers. In his examination of the relationship between the leaders and the led, he describes five categories of the latter: the general populace, activists, bureaucrats, influential elites, and, finally, confidants—the leader’s true inner circle. He also describes the steps of an autocratic leader’s ascendancy, from “striving for office” to “abusing power,” “consolidating power,” and “tyrannical rule,” noting that the window for interrupting this progression remains open right up until the moment a “prototyrant” takes the step of consolidating power and eliminating challenges to his rule. He analyzes the ways that ordinary citizens can make a difference in this crucial interval, from following a diverse range of news sources to taking effective action via the legal system and the vote. Chaleff writes with tremendous gusto and a sense of optimism. He skillfully arranges the levels of political involvement like layers of an onion, which will doubtless feel empowering to readers on the outer layers, who feel frustrated and helpless to even comprehend more powerful political forces. His call for activism, for instance, is inspiring: “While the populace goes about its business of daily living,” he writes, “the activist makes political change their business.” The timing of his book may strike many readers as apt in a divisive election season in which fears of authoritarianism are front and center, although Chaleff pointedly notes that he intends his book to be used “not in tomorrow’s election, but in any age.” One hopes that it’s not too late when the author urges readers to “act while the window is open, and the fresh breezes of political freedom still find their way into the halls of government.”
A passionate work about taking action to stop would-be dictators.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2024
ISBN: 9781637560563
Page Count: 338
Publisher: Wonderwell Press
Review Posted Online: July 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2024
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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