A powerful, alarming portrayal of how poverty remains entrenched in unfairly forgotten places across America.
Disturbing analysis of the persistent, surprising connection between poverty and place.
Edin, Shaefer, and Nelson developed this ambitious, revealing project in a roundabout way, following a prior collaboration examining family-centered poverty (Edin and Shaefer’s $2.00 a Day): “We wondered: Why were so few of our colleagues studying whole communities? Why weren’t we?” In 2019, they started embedding researchers to conduct immersive interviews in “Appalachia, South Texas, and the vast southern Cotton Belt running across seven states.” The isolation of the pandemic also turned the authors toward historical research, and a post-pandemic, 14-state “road trip” to see these places underscored the complexity encoded in unraveling narratives of “place-based disadvantage.” The problem persists, they argue, because of long-term, secretive webs of corporate control, rooted in sudden innovations in resource extraction that immediately require exploitation of mass human labor. “In place after place,” they write, “we discovered astonishing stories about the industries that fueled the rise of our nation, the workers who sustained them, and the histories of human suffering they wrought.” Unsurprisingly, “while some of these were majority-white, many, indeed most, were rural communities of color.” The authors vividly establish narrative and place by organizing the discussion into key subtopics, including the persistence of violence and political corruption. Despite this bleak focus on the human consequences in lived environments, they muster some optimism, talking to activist residents and offering suggestions, including an end to separate but unequal schooling and a recommitment to addressing violence and isolation via social mobility and restoration of public spaces. The collaborative writing is polished and clear, blending dynamic narrative detail and well-organized argument along with the plaintive voices of interviewees. “Great wealth was extracted from these regions in the form of raw materials that fueled not only national but global markets,” write the authors. “Yet from the start, these were also the places in the nation with the most inequality, severe poverty, ill health, and limited mobility.”
A powerful, alarming portrayal of how poverty remains entrenched in unfairly forgotten places across America.Pub Date: Aug. 8, 2023
ISBN: 9780063239494
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Mariner Books
Review Posted Online: May 1, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
A hopeful civic sermon favoring inspiration over concrete prescriptions.
A New Jersey senator’s moral manifesto.
Booker situates his narrative in the wake of his 2025 record-breaking 25-hour stand on the Senate floor, an act of physical endurance and moral insistence that serves as its animating example. Though not framed as memoir, the episode implicitly positions Booker himself as a model of the virtues he argues are essential to democratic life. Organized around 10 qualities, including agency, vulnerability, truth, perseverance, and grace, the book advances a clear thesis. “In this book, I argue that many Americans who came before us, and many among us today, have consistently proven that virtues are practical: They expand our power, deepen our sense of belonging, and equip us to endure and ultimately prevail.” Booker illustrates this claim through figures such as the late U.S. Rep. John Lewis, whose willingness to endure sacrifice for principle anchors the book’s moral lineage, and Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, whose composure under public scrutiny is presented as an example of dignity as civic strength. These portraits reinforce Booker’s belief that character, sustained over time, can shape public life, even when political outcomes remain uncertain or incomplete. He supplements these examples with personal stories drawn from family, faith, and community, delivered with emotional conviction and a tone that remains affirming and carefully calibrated. Much of the narrative reads like an expansive commencement address, earnest and reassuring, offering moral affirmation at moments when readers might reasonably expect sharper confrontation. That rhetorical choice ultimately defines the book’s limits. Booker acknowledges political conflict and compromise, but rarely examines them in depth, and while urging leaders to take moral risks, he avoids sustained reflection on how some of his own political decisions have tested the virtues he promotes. The result is a principled but self-conscious work that affirms shared values while offering little guidance for navigating power and accountability.
A hopeful civic sermon favoring inspiration over concrete prescriptions.Pub Date: March 24, 2026
ISBN: 9781250436733
Page Count: 272
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: March 24, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2026
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
