by Matt A. Barreto ; Gary M. Segura ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 30, 2014
A pertinent, useful study of significant trends in the American political landscape.
An examination of how, “in the twenty-first century, American politics will be shaped, in large measure, by how Latinos are incorporated into the political system.”
A team of pollsters at public opinion research firm Latino Decisions, led by Barreto (Political Science/Univ. of Washington) and Segura (Political Science/Stanford Univ.), breaks down the Latino polity to find out who the Latinos actually are, what is important to them and why they do or do not vote for one party or the other. The most recent presidential election showed decisively how crucial the Latino voting bloc is; 1 in 10 votes cast nationwide were by Latinos, and President Barack Obama won a whopping 75 percent of the Latino vote. However, as the authors show, support for the Democrats is not so straightforward; in fact, George W. Bush won most of the Latino vote, while in some places, such as in Florida, where the Latino population is predominantly Cuban, the trend remains conservative. Latinos tend to be more liberal than whites on certain issues such as the use of “government action to solve problems,” reflecting the economic stresses within the Latino community. Moreover, Latinos have a favorable opinion of the military, support environment protection (which impacts their own vulnerable communities), tend to tolerate LBGT rights but not abortion, and have grown more Democratic since the failed immigration reform of 2006 and 2007. Latinos have coalesced as a potent political group since the passage of Arizona’s punitive Senate Bill 1070 (“the papers please” law) in April 2010 and the Republican blocking of the DREAM Act. Indeed, failure on immigration reform forced Obama to push through (the now-controversial) DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) program in order to secure the disgruntled Latino bloc and win re-election. The authors offer key strategies for bringing more Latinos to the polls.
A pertinent, useful study of significant trends in the American political landscape.Pub Date: Sept. 30, 2014
ISBN: 978-1610395014
Page Count: 336
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2014
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BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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
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by Elie Wiesel ; edited by Alan Rosen
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by Elie Wiesel ; illustrated by Mark Podwal
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by Elie Wiesel ; translated by Marion Wiesel
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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