An inspired and insightful analysis of race-based challenges in the American school system.
A celebrated educational thinker takes stock of segregation in American schools.
Kozol, a former public school teacher, has been writing about America’s educational system for more than five decades, and he’s the author of such classics as the National Book Award–winning Death at an Early Age and Savage Inequalities. Although Brown v. Board of Education theoretically ended segregation, the author points out that the practice “continues unabated and is presently at its highest level since the early 1990s.” Students who attend predominantly Black and Latine schools must contend with a host of unnecessary disciplinary tactics, including being forbidden to ask questions in class, getting sent to “isolation rooms” for minor infractions, and even getting arrested at ages as young as 6. None of these tactics, writes Kozol, affect their white peers. The culture of these schools isn’t the only problem: Many of their buildings are bastions of “squalor and decrepitude,” with unusable bathrooms and shockingly dangerous levels of lead exposure. Ever since the passage of No Child Left Behind in 2001, schools serving Black and brown students have tended to prioritize testing over content. This is particularly true in language arts, where districts eschew novels for bite-sized passages and ban books that “foster critical thinking or address the conflicts that divide us, based on gender, class, and race.” Citing the work of Nikole Hannah-Jones, as well as his own experience teaching for a school integration program, Kozol convincingly argues that integration is the only way to address “the achievement gap between Black and white students.” The book thoroughly displays the author’s eloquence, conviction, expertise, and attention to detail. Most impressive is Kozol’s ability to draw connections among disparate events to illustrate the underlying systems driving the nation’s greatest inequities.
An inspired and insightful analysis of race-based challenges in the American school system.Pub Date: March 12, 2024
ISBN: 9781620978726
Page Count: 224
Publisher: The New Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A powerful reiteration of principles—and some fresh ideas—from the longest-serving independent in congressional history.
Another chapter in a long fight against inequality.
Building on his Fighting Oligarchy tour, which this year drew 280,000 people to rallies in red and blue states, Sanders amplifies his enduring campaign for economic fairness. The Vermont senator offers well-timed advice for combating corruption and issues a robust plea for national soul-searching. His argument rests on alarming data on the widening wealth gap’s impact on democracy. Bolstered by a 2010 Supreme Court decision that removed campaign finance limits, “100 billionaire families spent $2.6 billion” on 2024 elections. Sanders focuses on the Trump administration and congressional Republicans, describing their enactment of the “Big Beautiful Bill,” with its $1 trillion in tax breaks for the richest Americans and big social safety net cuts, as the “largest transfer of wealth” in living memory. But as is his custom, he spreads the blame, dinging Democrats for courting wealthy donors while ignoring the “needs and suffering” of the working class. “Trump filled the political vacuum that the Democrats created,” he writes, a resonant diagnosis. Urging readers not to surrender to despair, Sanders offers numerous legislative proposals. These would empower labor unions, cut the workweek to 32 hours, regulate campaign spending, reduce gerrymandering, and automatically register 18-year-olds to vote. Grassroots supporters can help by running for local office, volunteering with a campaign, and asking educators how to help support public schools. Meanwhile, Sanders asks us “to question the fundamental moral values that underlie” a system that enables “the top 1 percent” to “own more wealth than the bottom 93 percent.” Though his prose sometimes reads like a transcribed speech with built-in applause lines, Sanders’ ideas are specific, clear, and commonsensical. And because it echoes previous statements, his call for collective introspection lands as genuine.
A powerful reiteration of principles—and some fresh ideas—from the longest-serving independent in congressional history.Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2025
ISBN: 9798217089161
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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