An agenda-driven history that will appeal only to those who already share the author’s disdain of contemporary leftism.
A provocative comparison between fascism, Nazism, and the modern political left.
According to libertarian activist Samuels (In Defense of Chaos, 2013), the “so-called polar-opposite ideologies” of fascism and communism are “virtual carbon copies” and “almost indistinguishable” from each other. Both share common traits of authoritarianism, he says, as well as a preference for collectivism over individualism, a hostility to free market capitalism, and a predilection against freedom of speech and thought. Although much of his book centers on proving his contentious thesis on the communist origins of Italian fascism and German Nazism, his underlying objective is to connect them to today’s left. Samuels sees such parallels in leftist protests against conservative speakers on college campuses; what he calls the “Big Lie” of accusations of sexual misconduct against U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh; and what he terms the “positive racism” of affirmative action. Though starkly polemical, Samuels’ prose style is sophisticated, and at its best when challenging the contemporary right-left ideological axis. His discussion of the connections between the “Old Right” and communist governments are notable, as he points out that they both favor monarchic regimes and government-enforced morality. However, Samuels’ political agenda often lends itself to sloppy analysis when asserting connections between fascism/Nazism and the contemporary left. For example, his claim that today’s “Democratic Party still seems to attract racists and admirers of Hitler’s military and economic accomplishments” ignores myriad racist organizations to whom the Democratic Party is anathema. He also cites the alleged “popularity” of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan among Democrats as evidence of their racism; however, Farrakhan’s stances on traditional gender roles, and his skepticism of the federal government, are closer to those of the right than the left. Samuels accuses leftists of having “a muddled sense of history,” but much of his own retelling of the history of fascist Italy and Nazi Germany seems deliberately constructed to discredit his political opponents in today’s America.
An agenda-driven history that will appeal only to those who already share the author’s disdain of contemporary leftism.Pub Date: June 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-9615893-1-8
Page Count: 595
Publisher: Freeland Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.
A light-speed tour of (mostly) Western poetry, from the 4,000-year-old Gilgamesh to the work of Australian poet Les Murray, who died in 2019.
In the latest entry in the publisher’s Little Histories series, Carey, an emeritus professor at Oxford whose books include What Good Are the Arts? and The Unexpected Professor: An Oxford Life in Books, offers a quick definition of poetry—“relates to language as music relates to noise. It is language made special”—before diving in to poetry’s vast history. In most chapters, the author deals with only a few writers, but as the narrative progresses, he finds himself forced to deal with far more than a handful. In his chapter on 20th-century political poets, for example, he talks about 14 writers in seven pages. Carey displays a determination to inform us about who the best poets were—and what their best poems were. The word “greatest” appears continually; Chaucer was “the greatest medieval English poet,” and Langston Hughes was “the greatest male poet” of the Harlem Renaissance. For readers who need a refresher—or suggestions for the nightstand—Carey provides the best-known names and the most celebrated poems, including Paradise Lost (about which the author has written extensively), “Kubla Khan,” “Ozymandias,” “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads, which “changed the course of English poetry.” Carey explains some poetic technique (Hopkins’ “sprung rhythm”) and pauses occasionally to provide autobiographical tidbits—e.g., John Masefield, who wrote the famous “Sea Fever,” “hated the sea.” We learn, as well, about the sexuality of some poets (Auden was bisexual), and, especially later on, Carey discusses the demons that drove some of them, Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath among them. Refreshingly, he includes many women in the volume—all the way back to Sappho—and has especially kind words for Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop, who share a chapter.
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-23222-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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