Arguable, but instructively so, and a fluent take on history and politics from a thoughtful contrarian.
Conservative take on a revolution “born in rage.”
Legal scholar Turley opens with a nuanced overview in which the American Revolution, a violent reaction against perceived injustices, is a claim to rights “born to liberty”—and, he adds, while “liberty” is a watchword of the revolutionary era, “democracy” is not. Turley portrays two very different heroes of the period: the dissolute but deeply committed Briton Thomas Paine, and the aristocratic Virginian James Madison. Thomas Jefferson may have been the chief author of the Declaration of Independence, “exhilarating in its language and declarations of liberty,” but Madison proved a counterweight to Paine with the Constitution, a kind of technical owner’s manual for the new country. There’s another distinction Turley wishes to draw: “Where the debate over the Declaration of Independence was all about tyrants and autocrats, the debate over the Constitution was more about tyranny of the majority,” with Madison protecting the rest of the citizenry with the “strikingly countermajoritarian” Bill of Rights. Turley’s argument tacks differently as his narrative moves on, with political liberty augmented by economic liberty: He maintains that Adam Smith, a political philosopher rejoining Paine and Madison, saw “government controls and subsidies as forms of control and potentially forms of suppression of the human will.” Thus no welfare state, no raising taxes on the 1 percent, no democratic socialism. The argument that began with the Revolution takes an even more vertiginous but thought-provoking twist when Turley turns to a near-future scenario in which AI and robotics displace unskilled and service labor, which he seems to think inevitable and perhaps even all right: “There is little reason for a restaurant to employ workers to make Happy Meals when they can be done by robotics without healthcare, wage issues, or scheduling conflicts.” Whither the nation and the pursuit of happiness then?
Arguable, but instructively so, and a fluent take on history and politics from a thoughtful contrarian.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781668205020
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Dec. 11, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
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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