by Mary T. Ficalora ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A
An unpredictable tonic for what ails America.
New age approach to economic and political reform in the United States.
Ficalora borrows heavily from Jewish mysticism in this spiritual remedy for the dishonor and indecency plaguing the United States. Honor and morality are derived from a set of ten “Absolutes,” similar to the Kabbalah. But unlike the Kabbalah, Ficalora suggests her guiding principles be applied not only to nations but individuals as well. She calls upon every American to attain messianic consciousness. This takes on especially great importance in the United States, a land ruled by the people, for the people. The author came of age in the 1970s, immersed in drug use and free love despite her strict Catholic upbringing. This youthful rebellion later turned into social activism, which she embraced even further after becoming a mother. While her progressive tendencies always informed her approach to life, Ficalora didn’t become particularly inspired until the 2000 election of George W. Bush. She began studying American government and economics in earnest alongside her spiritual research. The fruits of her labor appear in this treatise. The author draws conclusions readers might expect from someone so long steeped in the political left: Bush lied, the war on terror is a farce and money rules the world. Her thinly veiled conspiracy theories about the “Money Power” behind all war and, as a result, all modern political power are nothing new. Ficalora might even be able to present a credible argument if her presentation were less dramatic and outrage not so overwrought. The author’s economic views, however, are surprisingly conservative or libertarian in origin; she speaks of her high regard for Milton Friedman’s concepts. The resulting call to action is unusual. Individuals are encouraged to accept their role as the nation’s destined saviors: “You can be a Messiah.” Add a heavy sprinkle of pop references from Mr. T to Pink Floyd to the mix and Ficalora’s book is a curious and uninhibited take on modern politics.
An unpredictable tonic for what ails America.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-0-9799359-0-9
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Ta-Nehisi Coates ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 8, 2015
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
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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
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by Paul Kalanithi ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 19, 2016
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
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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. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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