A valuable addition to the literature of democratic resistance.
Essays by contributors allied with the Renew Democracy Initiative on the necessity of defending democratic institutions in an anti-democratic era.
The strongest point of this useful collection is the depth and breadth of its opposition to our current illiberal atmosphere. Conservative historian Max Boot, libertarian-inclined economist Tyler Cowen, and liberal author Richard North Patterson are among those who set aside their differences and join forces against the “resurgence of political authoritarianism and extremism” following the 2016 election. As many contributors note, Donald Trump is a symptom and not a direct cause for the breakdown of democratic institutions; he did not create the sharp divisions in society, but he certainly exploits them to his own advantage. Conversely, writes the RDI’s board—chaired by chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov, no stranger to dissidence—by way of an introduction to a work that its members characterize as a modern Federalist Papers, the initiative aims to work around division to emphasize “how much we have in common: a belief in the fundamental ideas that for generations have made so much of the world free, prosperous, and safe.” The return to first principles and catholicity of the approach are admirable, and if some of the pieces are rather aridly academic, others have a populist urgency to them. For example, journalist and historian Anne Applebaum dissects the reasons behind Vladimir Putin’s embrace of authoritarians in the West—namely, to discredit democracy itself and the ideals that inform it, for which he “needs to undermine the institutions that promote them, to create chaos and discord in the democratic processes of the West and above all in Western institutions.” (One such institution, she adds, is the European Union, which Trump has so regularly reviled.) Perhaps the best piece in the collection is by journalist John Avlon, who observes with considerable understatement that "America is living through a stark departure from its best political traditions.” Other contributors include Ted Koppel, Bret Stephens, and Nancy Gertner.
A valuable addition to the literature of democratic resistance.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5417-2416-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: July 29, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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