A vivid attack on “the most partisan Senate leader in modern history” that is unlikely to change anyone’s mind.
Another painful account of the decline of American political discourse.
During a four-decade career in Washington, D.C., Shapiro served 12 years in various Senate staff positions, but only during the 20th century, when that institution functioned more or less as the Founders intended. He writes that its decline began during the 1990s but accelerated two decades later, when “Mitch McConnell and his Republican caucus repeatedly and deliberately took actions they knew to be wrong and failed to take actions they knew to be right.” Entering the Senate in 1984, McConnell quickly established his hard-conservative reputation, abetted by the pugnacious Newt Gingrich, among others. By 2008, McConnell had risen to minority leader and proclaimed a goal of making newly elected Barack Obama a one-term president. His tactic was not to propose alternative legislation but to oppose everything. He did not have the votes to defeat the Affordable Care Act, but his denunciation of “Obamacare” as socialized medicine resonated with voters, who gave Republicans a victory in the 2010 elections. Even today, polls reveal that Americans tend to deplore “Obamacare” but approve of the Affordable Care Act. Becoming Senate majority leader in 2015, he blocked nearly all of Obama’s judicial nominees, including to the Supreme Court, resulting in a massive influx of conservative judges after the election of Donald Trump. Aware, like most Republicans, that the new president was a loose cannon but wildly popular, McConnell kept his focus on conservative interests and electable Republicans, even when this irritated Trump, who preferred sycophants. Although he received no thanks, McConnell quashed potentially embarrassing investigations and ensured that the two impeachment trials fizzled. This is an informative but deeply discouraging book; few Republicans will read it, and few Democrats will quarrel with its conclusions. In the past, Congress has endured periods of paralysis, corruption, and violence but then recovered. Readers can only hope the current breakdown is temporary.
A vivid attack on “the most partisan Senate leader in modern history” that is unlikely to change anyone’s mind.Pub Date: May 17, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5381-6397-9
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2022
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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