Essential reading for anyone concerned with criminal justice reform.
A behavioral economist looks at crime and punishment, with sometimes surprising results.
There are any number of reasons why people prefer pat formulas—get tough on offenders, keep an eye out for broken windows—over science when addressing crime. Science is hard. Yet nonscientific outcomes are, as social scientists say, suboptimal. In the vein of Freakonomics, Doleac turns to scientific method to test a number hypotheses, arguing, “I…see a lack of rigor as unethical.” As any economist might do, she weighs reward versus punishment as incentives for behavior. One insight is that, yes, there are plenty of people who belong in prison, having committed violent crimes such as rape and murder. But a related insight is that most people who enter the justice system are “more sad than scary,” perpetrators of misdemeanor offenses such as shoplifting and drug use. Given that most crime, by Doleac’s account, is not well thought out in advance and that much crime goes unpunished, there are remedies such as building a vast, national database of DNA—which, she maintains, has a greater deterrent effect than the threat of imprisonment, since DNA evidence can help improve the likelihood of identifying those who commit a crime quickly and thus act as a strong disincentive. (For privacy advocates, she notes that such a database is accessible only to law enforcement.) “This intervention breaks the incarceration cycle rather than perpetuating it,” Doleac argues. Perhaps counterintuitively, she also advocates for lighter sentences for nonviolent crimes, given experimental results that show that leniency “reduced the likelihood of showing up in court again with new charges by 53 percent, and it reduced the number of future charges by 60 percent.” Other remedies are more counterintuitive still, such as providing air filters in school classrooms, which “have a meaningful effect on pollution exposure, in a way that has big real-world benefits”—including reducing crime.
Essential reading for anyone concerned with criminal justice reform.Pub Date: Feb. 24, 2026
ISBN: 9781250886286
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
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
© Copyright 2026 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.
