The veteran New York Times Supreme Court reporter charts the first term of the right-leaning, avowedly religious supermajority now on the bench.
Why are six of the nine Supreme Court justices Catholic? The answer, writes Greenhouse, can be “summarized in one word: abortion.” While a president isn’t supposed to demand a quid-pro-quo pledge to end Roe v. Wade, the assumption is that an observant Catholic will quietly do their best to undermine the constitutional right to abortion. Thus it surely was when Trump nominated Amy Coney Barrett, who, though well prepared for the post—a Notre Dame Law professor called her the best student he’d ever seen—was also identified with far-right conservatism, a key member of the Federalist Society “who proclaimed her fidelity to a theory of constitutional interpretation known as originalism.” Never mind that the original Constitution made little room for non-Whites and nonmales: Barrett joined with a long line of conservative justices who saw little room for constitutional evolution. Though Greenhouse warns that the shift to a far-right court will make it Trump’s more than Chief Justice Roberts’ for decades to come, Barrett has surprised with a couple of judgments, notably in refusing to allow challenges to the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. Even so, observes the author, Barrett has also quietly participated in a privileging of religious conviction, perhaps opening the door to challenges to same-sex marriage on the grounds of one’s religious views. “Renegotiating the boundary between church and state was part of the unstated charge to the most recent nominees,” writes Greenhouse, “so the degree to which religion dominated the 2021-2022 term came as no surprise.” And if Barrett and, to a lesser extent, Kavanaugh have not leapt into this renegotiation with vigor yet, Greenhouse suggests that it’s only a matter of time until they do.
For Supreme Court watchers, provocative; for civil libertarians, alarming.Pub Date: Nov. 9, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-44793-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Nov. 13, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2021
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Sedaris remains stubbornly irreverent even in the face of pandemic lockdowns and social upheaval.
In his previous collection of original essays, Calypso (2018), the author was unusually downbeat, fixated on aging and the deaths of his mother and sister. There’s bad news in this book, too—most notably, the death of his problematic and seemingly indestructible father at 96—but Sedaris generally carries himself more lightly. On a trip to a gun range, he’s puzzled by boxer shorts with a holster feature, which he wishes were called “gunderpants.” He plays along with nursing-home staffers who, hearing a funnyman named David is on the premises, think he’s Dave Chappelle. He’s bemused by his sister Amy’s landing a new apartment to escape her territorial pet rabbit. On tour, he collects sheaves of off-color jokes and tales of sexual self-gratification gone wrong. His relationship with his partner, Hugh, remains contentious, but it’s mellowing. (“After thirty years, sleeping is the new having sex.”) Even more serious stuff rolls off him. Of Covid-19, he writes that “more than eight hundred thousand people have died to date, and I didn’t get to choose a one of them.” The author’s support of Black Lives Matter is tempered by his interest in the earnest conscientiousness of organizers ensuring everyone is fed and hydrated. (He refers to one such person as a “snacktivist.”) Such impolitic material, though, puts serious essays in sharper, more powerful relief. He recalls fending off the flirtations of a 12-year-old boy in France, frustrated by the language barrier and other factors that kept him from supporting a young gay man. His father’s death unlocks a crushing piece about dad’s inappropriate, sexualizing treatment of his children. For years—chronicled in many books—Sedaris labored to elude his father’s criticism. Even in death, though, it proves hard to escape or laugh off.
A sweet-and-sour set of pieces on loss, absurdity, and places they intersect.Pub Date: May 31, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-316-39245-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: March 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2022
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A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
12
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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. 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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