An important contribution to understanding the contentious politics of today.
Martin (Sociology/Univ. of California, San Diego; The Permanent Tax Revolt: How the Property Tax Transformed American Politics, 2008, etc.) asks why the already powerful and influential wealthy in America would resort to outsider tactics of protests and petitions to further their economic interests and why those of lesser means would protest on their behalf.
The tea party movement, writes the author, is but “the newest expression of an old tradition,” a “peculiar mix of populist tactics and militant anti-egalitarian demands.” Since the 1913 ratification of the 16th Amendment—which allows for a federal tax on income—the rich and their allies have consistently fought to limit tax rates on the rich and even for the repeal of the amendment. This libertarian right turned to populist tactics when other strategies to meet such common policy challenges failed. But they had to be taught such tactics. In large part, Martin’s book is the story of these “experienced movement entrepreneurs” who developed and carried out grass-roots campaigns on behalf of the rich. Most such entrepreneurs had participated in or experienced the radical left movements of their times: James Asbury Arnold, the original organizer for the right, was a veteran of the agrarian protest of the early 20th century; Edward Aloysius Rumely, a later organizer, came from a similar radical background. Grover Norquist, today’s powerful anti-tax organizer, learned many of his tactics from the Angolan Marxist revolutionary Jonas Savimbi. The rich pursued such tactics because they worked, especially when sympathetic presidents were in power, be it Calvin Coolidge or George W. Bush. With the capture of the Republican Party by anti-tax zealots, writes Martin, more rich people’s movements, and widening inequality, can be expected. While at times lapsing into social science–speak (e.g., “logistic regression analysis”), Martin by and large tells his tale in an approachable manner.
An important contribution to understanding the contentious politics of today.Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-19-992899-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2013
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
