An impassioned manifesto for social reform.
An investigation of the need for forging bonds in activist work.
Hunt-Hendrix and Taylor have been activists for solidarity since they met in 2011 during the Occupy Wall Street movement. Hunt-Hendrix, granddaughter of oil tycoon H.L. Hunt, co-founded Solidaire, a network of philanthropists who fund progressive movements, and Way to Win, which focuses on policy and electoral strategy. Taylor co-founded the Debt Collective, a union that organizes debtors to fight for debt cancellation and other reparative social policies. Solidarity, the authors argue persuasively, is essential for confronting deep social, political, and ecological problems. At a time of increasing polarization, “what can enable us to come together despite entrenched social divisions and the immense power of self-interested elites?” Recognizing that feelings of cohesiveness can create exclusionary groups—such as the solidarity shared by white supremacists—the authors posit “transformative solidarity,” which fosters fellowship across differences, stands against divisive forces, and works toward collective action for the common good. The authors trace the concept of solidarity from ancient Rome, where debt was a collective obligation, to modern movements such as Black Lives Matter. They examine the generation of liberal democratic ideals after the French Revolution and the rise of solidarism from the social disruption caused by the Industrial Revolution. Solidarists held that interdependence, “a fact of human life and the natural world,” should be the basis of law and policy. However, solidarity is undermined by a market-driven system that encourages people to see each other as competitors for resources and to spurn solidarity in favor of self-interest. Philanthropy by billionaires functions as a “fig leaf” to cover up injustices, intensifying the difference between givers and receivers. For lasting change, solidarity, the authors assert, requires the cultivation of justice, commitment, courage, humility—and a conviction that we can remake the world.
An impassioned manifesto for social reform.Pub Date: March 12, 2024
ISBN: 9780593701249
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: Dec. 27, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
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
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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
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