An indispensable contribution to the debate about gun violence.
In a stellar debut, Cox expands his Washington Post series on the invisible wounds of children damaged by gun violence, a finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for feature writing.
In 2016, after the fatal shooting of a classmate at her South Carolina school, 7-year-old Ava Olsen was so traumatized that she developed severe PTSD. She even used stickers to cover up the “scary words” in Little House on the Prairie: “gun, fire, blood, kill.” In this powerful report on the emotional scars left by gun violence, Cox argues that Ava is one of millions of American children “who weren’t shot and aren’t considered victims by our legal system but who have, nonetheless, been irreparably harmed by the epidemic.” With deep sympathy for his young subjects, he probes the roots of—and possible solutions to—the crisis, taking sharp aim at the $3 billion school security market, which exploits parental fears by touting products of unproven worth, such as “$150 bulletproof backpacks.” But the beating heart of the narrative consists of the heart-rending stories of vulnerable children. Ava’s pen pal Tyshaun McPhatter wouldn’t let his mother wash a sweatshirt worn by his father, murdered in Washington, D.C., so he’d remember the scent. Her schoolmate Siena Kibilko, prepared for another shooting, had picked out a hiding spot at school “where she just knew the gunman wouldn’t think to look.” Especially moving is the story of Ava’s 6-year-old superhero-loving classmate, Jacob Hall, killed in the shooting at her school and laid out at his funeral in a Batman costume, mourned at the church by friends dressed in his honor as Captain America and other superheroes. Cox analyzes the gun crisis astutely, but his surpassing achievement in this eloquent book is to let children speak for themselves about their grief. Put this one on a shelf with Alex Kotlowitz’s There Are No Children Here—and have a box of tissues handy.
An indispensable contribution to the debate about gun violence.Pub Date: March 30, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-288393-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2021
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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