An informative but starchy history of primaries and how they have hurt democracy and enabled Trumpism.
A political scientist scrutinizes the underappreciated role of America’s primary-election system in the nation’s ideological polarization and the rise of Donald Trump.
Jacobs, the founder and director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, argues that primary elections undermine democracy, offering a timely but pedantic blend of a scholarly history of primaries and a critique of their enduring harms. Fearing rule by “the mob” instead of the gentry, James Madison and other framers made no mention of primaries in the Constitution, and as late as 1968, party bosses still controlled the selection of most delegates. That began to change with the election reforms of the 1970s, following Richard Nixon’s defeat of Hubert Humphrey, who ran in no primaries. The reforms weakened the influence of the old-school bosses and strengthened “a new network of party activists, organized groups, and donors.” These groups demand loyalty to their favored policies rather than to a party and, like Trump supporters, tend to be more ideologically extreme than voters in general. The author’s tightly structured arguments often read like expanded PowerPoint presentations without bullet points, as he covers the “two profound shifts in the party system in the past 50 years; the “three features” of strong democracy in the 1780s; the “four critical junctures” for election rules; “the five extraordinary consequences” of the rise of presidential primaries; and other enumerations. Jacobs also describes the “three sturdy barriers” to reforms he supports, such as having more unpledged “superdelegates” to nominating conventions, and he recalls historical injustices in the Jim Crow South, where Black voters were barred from casting ballots. All of this material will have high appeal for primary-election wonks, but it gives the sense that its natural readership consists of people who will be tested on the material at the end of the semester.
An informative but starchy history of primaries and how they have hurt democracy and enabled Trumpism.Pub Date: March 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-19-087724-8
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: Jan. 10, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2022
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
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© 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.
