A revealing—and disturbing—analysis of a dangerous threat to American democracy.
An international security scholar teams up with a psychologist specializing in radicalization to explore the QAnon movement.
QAnon, a congeries of conspiracy theories whose origins lie in a curious blend of popular culture, science fiction, and deep-rooted antisemitism, has swept up millions of people of varying ideologies and levels of education. Bloom and Moskalenko quote David Gilbert from Vice News: “There are highly educated people that fall into these movements, and it is dangerous and remiss to pigeonhole QAnon followers according to educational attainment or social status.” Even so, write the authors, QAnon is a magnet for the mentally ill, particularly people suffering from PTSD, one manifestation of which is “the feeling of not belonging.” Other forms of anomie and detachment are evident throughout the movement. An unusually large segment of members are women, who “have been at the forefront of white racist movements for the past 100 years.” Such women have been responsible for numerous crimes, and those involved in QAnon were well represented in the attack on the Capitol of Jan. 6, 2021. Oddly, the authors note, there are connections between QAnon and the fuzzy New Age movement, which shares a mistrust of corporations, government, and the media and a view that all are dark forces bent on poisoning minds and bodies. With the canonical doctrine that Democrats are satanic pedophiles and that Donald Trump is the only person on the planet who can combat them (and their “Jewish space lasers”), we’re on the dark side of the moon indeed. And it just gets weirder, but more urgent, with QAnon planks that paint Tom Hanks and Oprah Winfrey as agents of a movement meant to destroy the Constitution and enslave those who don’t share their liberal views. The authors close with the note that the madness is contagious and that QAnon views have spread to dozens of other countries.
A revealing—and disturbing—analysis of a dangerous threat to American democracy.Pub Date: June 15, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5036-3029-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Redwood Press/Stanford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
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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