A timely, powerful approach to history that looks into the past to find a path into a better future.
An innovative reading of Black history, gracefully joining it to the larger history of all humankind.
As podcaster and “self-proclaimed intellectual adventurer” Fowler observes at the beginning of this rich book, there’s irony in the fact that the founder of Black History Month, Carter G. Woodson, believed we should study not Black history as such but “Black people in history.” It’s a subtle distinction, but nearly a century later, Woodson’s vision “sits in the bargain bin of education, the place a thing goes after losing its value—its essence, its very soul.” That Woodson is not better known supports Fowler’s vigorous program of prowling the stacks to look at pioneering literature and those who kept it alive—people such as Arthur Alfonso Schomburg, who gathered thousands of books on Black life, and Lerone Bennett Jr., whose 1962 book Before the Mayflower: A History of Black America “mainstreamed 1619 as the most important date in Black American history.” Fowler consistently turns up intriguing surprises. For example, the model for the kneeling figure in the Emancipation Memorial in Washington, D.C., who escaped from slavery in 1863, was the great-great-great grandfather of boxing legend Muhammad Ali, and the first donation for the memorial, dedicated in 1922, came from a formerly enslaved woman—ironic, again, since the memorial highlights not the enslaved but Abraham Lincoln, a Whitewashing of history that devalues Black Americans’ vital role in their own liberation. Drawing on the work of Orlando Patterson in the project of joining the particular to the universal, Fowler examines slavery as a worldwide phenomenon. “If we look back on such an all-pervasive human institution and assume we are incapable of committing such atrocities ourselves, we will fail to prevent it in the future,” he writes. Given revanchist White supremacism and its insistence “that slavery was benign,” what remains is to counter untruthful narratives through constant self-education and well-formed knowledge, which Fowler accomplishes in this book.
A timely, powerful approach to history that looks into the past to find a path into a better future.Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2023
ISBN: 9781955905145
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Row House Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
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
A familiar format, but a timely reminder that cities are made up of individuals, each with their own stories.
Portraits in a post-pandemic world.
After the Covid-19 lockdowns left New York City’s streets empty, many claimed that the city was “gone forever.” It was those words that inspired Stanton, whose previous collections include Humans of New York (2013), Humans of New York: Stories (2015), and Humans (2020), to return to the well once more for a new love letter to the city’s humanity and diversity. Beautifully laid out in hardcover with crisp, bright images, each portrait of a New Yorker is accompanied by sparse but potent quotes from Stanton’s interviews with his subjects. Early in the book, the author sequences three portraits—a couple laughing, then looking serious, then the woman with tears in her eyes—as they recount the arc of their relationship, transforming each emotional beat of their story into an affecting visual narrative. In another, an unhoused man sits on the street, his husky eating out of his hand. The caption: “I’m a late bloomer.” Though the pandemic isn’t mentioned often, Stanton focuses much of the book on optimistic stories of the post-pandemic era. Among the most notable profiles is Myles Smutney, founder of the Free Store Project, whose story of reclaiming boarded‑up buildings during the lockdowns speaks to the city’s resilience. In reusing the same formula from his previous books, the author confirms his thesis: New York isn’t going anywhere. As he writes in his lyrical prologue, “Just as one might dive among coral reefs to marvel at nature, one can come to New York City to marvel at humanity.” The book’s optimism paints New York as a city where diverse lives converge in moments of beauty, joy, and collective hope.
A familiar format, but a timely reminder that cities are made up of individuals, each with their own stories.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781250277589
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
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