edited by John Freeman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 5, 2017
Urgent, worthy reportage from our fractious, volatile social and cultural moment.
A penetrating multidisciplinary collection attacking today’s social fissures of privilege and inequality.
Former Granta editor Freeman (How to Read a Novelist, 2013, etc.), founder of the eponymous literary biannual, expands on a previous anthology regarding New York City’s inequality with this follow-up. “This is not just an urban problem,” he writes. “In smaller cities and towns and in rural America the gulf between the haves and have-nots stretches just as wide, even if its symptoms are not so visible.” While these parameters seem broad, Freeman’s mandate is fulfilled by the uniformly high quality of the contributors. Most address the topic obliquely, avoiding bombast in favor of grounded social narrative or the perspective offered by formative experience. Rebecca Solnit begins with a meticulous journalistic look at “Death by Gentrification,” in which a flashpoint of police violence in San Francisco revealed corrosive changes within trendy neighborhoods. In “Trash Food,” Chris Offutt connects his unease with intellectual condescension toward impoverished rural people with his own conflicts about identity: “As [Southern] cuisines gained popularity, the food itself became culturally upgraded.” Novelist Richard Russo addresses current politics more directly, noting that literature used to reflect engagement with a working class that now appears dismissed. “One can be sympathetic to Trump voters,” he writes, “without giving them a free pass.” Some pieces are directly autobiographical—e.g., Sandra Cisneros’ “Notes of a Native Daughter,” in which she writes, “Chicago’s Magnificent Mile made others feel magnificent but only made me ashamed of my shoes.” Others use the working writer’s unique situation as a lens for particular subtopics: Karen Russell’s long, affecting “Looking for a Home” portrays house-shopping in Portland during a homelessness epidemic as a moral challenge. Eula Biss’ powerful “White Debt” deftly wields financial metaphors. The anthology is rounded out with fiction and poetry from Joyce Carol Oates, Edwidge Danticat, Joy Williams, Kevin Young, Ann Patchett, Annie Dillard, Roxane Gay, Timothy Egan, and others.
Urgent, worthy reportage from our fractious, volatile social and cultural moment.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-14-313103-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2017
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edited by John Freeman
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edited by Tracy K. Smith & John Freeman
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edited by John Freeman
by Steven Levitsky & Daniel Ziblatt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2018
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics,...
A provocative analysis of the parallels between Donald Trump’s ascent and the fall of other democracies.
Following the last presidential election, Levitsky (Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America, 2003, etc.) and Ziblatt (Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy, 2017, etc.), both professors of government at Harvard, wrote an op-ed column titled, “Is Donald Trump a Threat to Democracy?” The answer here is a resounding yes, though, as in that column, the authors underscore their belief that the crisis extends well beyond the power won by an outsider whom they consider a demagogue and a liar. “Donald Trump may have accelerated the process, but he didn’t cause it,” they write of the politics-as-warfare mentality. “The weakening of our democratic norms is rooted in extreme partisan polarization—one that extends beyond policy differences into an existential conflict over race and culture.” The authors fault the Republican establishment for failing to stand up to Trump, even if that meant electing his opponent, and they seem almost wistfully nostalgic for the days when power brokers in smoke-filled rooms kept candidacies restricted to a club whose members knew how to play by the rules. Those supporting the candidacy of Bernie Sanders might take as much issue with their prescriptions as Trump followers will. However, the comparisons they draw to how democratic populism paved the way toward tyranny in Peru, Venezuela, Chile, and elsewhere are chilling. Among the warning signs they highlight are the Republican Senate’s refusal to consider Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee as well as Trump’s demonization of political opponents, minorities, and the media. As disturbing as they find the dismantling of Democratic safeguards, Levitsky and Ziblatt suggest that “a broad opposition coalition would have important benefits,” though such a coalition would strike some as a move to the center, a return to politics as usual, and even a pragmatic betrayal of principles.
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics, rather than in the consensus it is not likely to build.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6293-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
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by Bari Weiss ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 10, 2019
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.
Known for her often contentious perspectives, New York Times opinion writer Weiss battles societal Jewish intolerance through lucid prose and a linear playbook of remedies.
While she was vividly aware of anti-Semitism throughout her life, the reality of the problem hit home when an active shooter stormed a Pittsburgh synagogue where her family regularly met for morning services and where she became a bat mitzvah years earlier. The massacre that ensued there further spurred her outrage and passionate activism. She writes that European Jews face a three-pronged threat in contemporary society, where physical, moral, and political fears of mounting violence are putting their general safety in jeopardy. She believes that Americans live in an era when “the lunatic fringe has gone mainstream” and Jews have been forced to become “a people apart.” With palpable frustration, she adroitly assesses the origins of anti-Semitism and how its prevalence is increasing through more discreet portals such as internet self-radicalization. Furthermore, the erosion of civility and tolerance and the demonization of minorities continue via the “casual racism” of political figures like Donald Trump. Following densely political discourses on Zionism and radical Islam, the author offers a list of bullet-point solutions focused on using behavioral and personal action items—individual accountability, active involvement, building community, loving neighbors, etc.—to help stem the tide of anti-Semitism. Weiss sounds a clarion call to Jewish readers who share her growing angst as well as non-Jewish Americans who wish to arm themselves with the knowledge and intellectual tools to combat marginalization and defuse and disavow trends of dehumanizing behavior. “Call it out,” she writes. “Especially when it’s hard.” At the core of the text is the author’s concern for the health and safety of American citizens, and she encourages anyone “who loves freedom and seeks to protect it” to join with her in vigorous activism.
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-593-13605-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2019
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