Powerful ammunition, so to speak, for advocates of gun control in a time of uncontrolled violence.
A collection of writings that both explain and advocate against the explosion of gun-related crimes and deaths in the U.S.
Few features of the culture separate America from the rest of the world more than gun violence. As Jill Lepore writes, more Americans own guns than citizens of any other nation on the planet; the runner-up is Yemen, which comes in at only half the rate of ownership per capita. “No civilian population is more powerfully armed,” she notes. “Most Americans do not, however, own guns, because three-quarters of people with guns own two or more.” There were clear constitutional reasons to permit gun ownership, writes former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, dissenting against a 2008 ruling giving much broader gun rights to individuals: “The stand-alone phrase ‘bear arms’ most naturally conveys a military meaning unless the addition of a qualifying phrase signals that a different meaning is intended.” That there is no qualifying phrase suggests to Stevens that the Second Amendment has been misread. No matter: there are all sorts of miscreants out there in a culture of mayhem whose tutelary symbol might be Charles Whitman, the “Texas Tower Sniper” whose 1966 spree is one of the first mass killings of civilians in American history. (Said one Texan as the event was happening, “Well, I hope they get him off that Tower pretty quick, because the anti-gun people are going to go crazy over this.”) But there are other villains in the piece, including corrupt and violent police, a subject on which writer Frank Serpico is an unassailable authority: “When police officers do wrong, use those individuals as examples of what not to do—so that others know that this behavior will not be tolerated.” As to how the country became so overrun with weapons in the first place—its initials are NRA. Other contributors include Ibram X. Kendi, Andrew Ross Sorkin, and Shannon Watts.
Powerful ammunition, so to speak, for advocates of gun control in a time of uncontrolled violence.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61219-879-8
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Melville House
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2020
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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
PERSPECTIVES
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