With some substance, but mostly aid and comfort for the defund-the-police movement.
The author of Understanding Mass Incarceration returns with a plaintive critique of the surveillance state.
In addition to conventional prison, writes Kilgore, we now face e-carceration, “the application of a network of punitive technologies to social problems” that “deprive people of their liberty.” These technologies include ankle monitors and other tracking devices as well as security cameras, cellphone tracking, facial-recognition software, and a host of other techniques and tools. They also can be used in ways that are not strictly related to the punishment at hand. As the author explains, e-carceration technologies are often deployed with rules attached that make it difficult if not impossible for the detained to find employment or housing, and, as always, they disfavor ethnic minorities and the poor. All of us are subject to these technologies to one degree or another: It’s been estimated that in London, a walker in the inner city will be photographed 200 times by security cameras in a single day. Kilgore observes that this machine surveillance means that police departments, especially in places that are cash-strapped, can offload the costs of personnel. In one case study, he examines the devolution of the police force in Camden, New Jersey, a place overwhelmingly poor and inhabited by people of color. With surveillance technology in place, policing was essentially outsourced, and the machine fed itself. Camden began issuing citations for camera-recorded petty offenses that skyrocketed from 28,000 in 2013 to 125,000 in 2014, citations that “provided opportunities to collect more data on the local population, which could be fed into the array of local and national databases Camden was joining.” The author makes many significant points, though readers must take into account that he himself is a veteran of the penal system, jailed for crimes committed on the part of the Symbionese Liberation Army.
With some substance, but mostly aid and comfort for the defund-the-police movement.Pub Date: Jan. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-62097-614-2
Page Count: 224
Publisher: The New Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2021
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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