A sobering account of how governments have used Covid-19 as a pretext for limiting freedom.
Two advocates for journalists’ rights reveal the severe blows to free expression and democracy inflicted by world leaders’ repressive actions during the pandemic.
Drawing on their work with the Committee to Protect Journalists, Simon and Mahoney map the alarming spread of what the World Health Organization calls “the infodemic”—“the flood of misinformation, lies, rumors, half-truths,” and other ills that authorities worldwide have deployed to weaponize Covid-19, risking lives and undermining freedom. “Censorship has been a defining feature of the…pandemic,” they write. Legal and journalistic purists may take issue with their expansion of the traditional definition of censorship to include not just the suppression of information, but its manipulation for harmful ends, as by promoting false narratives or spying on citizens electronically, purportedly to promote public safety. But it’s hard to argue with the wealth of facts, quotes, and stories the authors use to support their case. A startling number of countries have become “less free” during the pandemic: 91 have imposed new censorship measures, and in 80, democracy and human rights have deteriorated, according to a 2020 report by the democracy watchdog Freedom House. The infodemic may have begun when China lied about the origins of Covid-19 (at one point claiming that it originated in imported “frozen food”), but it spread quickly to democracies like Brazil, which pumped out misinformation; and Israel and Norway, which “coerced or cajoled” citizens into releasing personal data on dubious grounds. The “most disappointing result by far” has occurred in India, which Freedom House downgraded from a “free” to “partly free” country after Prime Minister Narendra Modi cracked down on the press, shut down the courts, and vilified Muslims by suggesting that they were spreading the virus. Few readers will disagree with the authors’ conclusion that, in response to such crises, people everywhere must “stand up for our right to speak freely.”
A sobering account of how governments have used Covid-19 as a pretext for limiting freedom.Pub Date: April 26, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-73591-368-1
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Columbia Global Reports
Review Posted Online: Jan. 31, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2022
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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