A trenchant critique of the Left’s economic radicalism, coupling shrewd analysis with a stinging polemic.
The hypertrophy of the federal government has brought socialism out of hibernation and turned it into a dire threat to the American economy, according to this sweeping historical study.
Distinguishing his subject from the “traditional Left” of liberals, labor unions, and other moderate leftists, Young warns of a resurgent socialist Left with Marxist roots, among whom he numbers Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other congressional Squad members, the Democratic Socialists of America, and the campus protest Left. The author focuses on their economic agenda, which, he argues, envisions the federal government taking over and nationalizing most of the economy, providing free education and health care, guaranteeing housing and jobs, and imposing confiscatory wealth taxes. The result, he contends, would be a sluggish, inefficient, moribund economy crushed by a terminally bloated government sector. Starting in the Obama administration, Young argues, this socialist Left reemerged to try to commandeer the federal government juggernaut by taking over the Democratic Party. The author presents an intricate and wide-ranging analysis of American economics and politics, one that has both interpretive breadth and a wealth of statistical detail. He’s especially good on the socio-economic miracle of colonial America, with its unprecedented levels of prosperity and equality based in self-government, and on the New Deal’s radical break with the American pattern of limited government. At times, he overstates the gap between the Sanders-AOC program and Democratic Party traditions, but he makes a vigorous case that their approach is economically and politically unsustainable because of its heavy tax and regulatory burdens. Young conveys all of this in lucid prose that packs an aphoristic punch. (“As a multiplicity of movements with at least as many voices and priorities, the socialist Left is political schizophrenia.”) Leftists and honest-to-God socialists will find much to dispute here, but Young offers a compelling conservative riposte to progressive orthodoxies.
A trenchant critique of the Left’s economic radicalism, coupling shrewd analysis with a stinging polemic.Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2024
ISBN: 9798891381292
Page Count: 432
Publisher: RealClear Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 20, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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