In the race between “hope and hate,” Green’s informative historical memoir shows him to be firmly on the side of hope for...
A memoir that offers reasons for optimism about America’s political future.
Reflecting on his 50-year adventure in politics, Green (Losing Our Democracy: How Bush, the Far Right & Big Business Are Betraying Americans for Power & Profit, 2006, etc.) offers colorful anecdotes, gossip, and savvy critiques to support his contention that liberalism is on the rise. “In my view,” he writes, “if liberal values were a stock, now is the time to buy.” The author believes that movements from the 1960s—“for civil rights, peace, women, gays, environmental justice, health care for all, corporate accountability, and consumer justice”—are shaping current politics, with a resurgence of the kind of progressivism that attracted him to Ralph Nader, with whom he worked for a decade; propelled him to run for the Senate and mayor of New York (he lost both races); and fueled his lifelong advocacy work. He served as commissioner of consumer affairs under Mayor David Dinkins and twice as public advocate. A familiar radio and TV personality, Green appeared on Larry King’s shows; sparred with William Buckley nearly 100 times on Firing Line; and founded Both Sides Now, a radio show currently airing nationally. A seasoned campaign worker for Gary Hart, Bill Clinton, and John Kerry, Green summarizes a series of skills essential to winning: be relentless, always optimistic, unwaveringly disciplined, calm, smart, friendly, and a good listener. He also advises finding a voice that’s “distinctive, i.e., your brand”; balancing egotism and empathy (Hillary Clinton’s “big heart is not a tactic but a trait,” he adds); finding a strong mentor; raising enough money; and knowing when to retreat. Looking ahead, Green’s “to do” list for Democrats includes “vivid progressive counterattacks” to conservative tactics. Because of changing demographics and “the GOP lurch into fringeland,” he predicts a strong victory for Democrats in 2016.
In the race between “hope and hate,” Green’s informative historical memoir shows him to be firmly on the side of hope for America.Pub Date: May 3, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-250-07157-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2016
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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
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