A well-researched and approachable survey of 21st-century immigration.
A husband-and-wife team explores the psychosocial dimensions of immigration in this nonfiction book.
While the details of their biographies may differ, as Reimann immigrated to the United States as a 10-year-old boy from Germany and Rodríguez-Reimann came via Mexico at 15, the authors share the ubiquitous experiences of most immigrants in grappling with a new home, culture and language barriers, and questions surrounding identity. The book begins by emphasizing that the history of humanity is one of “people on the move,” from early migration out of East Africa onward. From a 21st-century perspective, the volume notes, the number of global immigrants has risen by more than 51 million people per year since 2010, as migrants make up more than 3% of the world’s population. Written as “an act of love,” the volume presents “a framework that helps foster a better understanding of the many pieces that make up an immigration experience.” With doctorates in psychology, the authors come from academic backgrounds and have published multiple articles in scholarly journals. Built on their personal experiences and academic research, this work has a solid basis in peer-reviewed studies and boasts a healthy network of endnotes. But it also succeeds in the authors’ goal of offering readers “professional information about common immigration experiences” in “more accessible,” jargon-free prose. The volume’s accessibility is enhanced by graphs and other visual aids, ample text-box vignettes that feature gripping anecdotes, and a glossary that breaks down the nuanced differences between refugees, asylum seekers, migrants, and other terms often misused in public conversations. As top executives of the Group for Immigrant Resettlement & Assessment, the authors focus much of their writing on providing pragmatic policy suggestions and valuable advice to immigrants and their allies regarding transitioning to life in a new nation. This includes how to navigate Covid-19–related protocols. The authors’ practical advice, combined with their academic backgrounds and humanitarian empathy, makes for a definitive work on immigration that convincingly counters the simplistic “zero-sum game” analysis that too often surrounds debates on the issue.
A well-researched and approachable survey of 21st-century immigration.Pub Date: Dec. 6, 2021
ISBN: 9781955658003
Page Count: 206
Publisher: Romo Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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 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
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