A powerful, well-researched survey of the lives of agricultural guest workers.
Durbin explores the hidden lives of H-2A temporary agricultural workers in this nonfiction work.
At its inception in 1987, the H-2A visa program certified just over 40 positions for temporary nonimmigrant workers to enter the United States. Today, the number of so-called guest workers, most of whom are Mexican men who leave their families for seasonal crop work, has soared to more than 300,000. This look into the lives of seasonal agricultural workers in eastern North Carolina begins in Mexico as men like 60-year-old Domingo Álvarez begin a multiday transnational bus trip from their home to the Tar Heel State. While the contributions of guest workers to the American economy receive ample coverage (“We need them. They need us,” Durbin writes), what makes this book stand out is its deeply personal narrative. Readers learn about the rompecabezas de enredo (handmade entanglement puzzles made from wires and cords) that one older migrant makes for the journey; social dynamics that exist inside worker communities (where the mayordomo is “the most-senior member of a grower’s crew…who can speak enough English to receive instructions from the grower, or patrón”); and how workers communicate with family via Facebook and WhatsApp messages. While many note how work in the United States has provided them with “a better economic situation,” the workers’ living conditions and tenuous employment, exacerbated by abusive growers, have also bred a culture of “fear of retaliation” among many who declined to have their names published. (Although he uses pseudonyms, Durbin assures readers that the workers referenced are not composites, but real people he interviewed or witnessed firsthand.) He observes that, as sincere as nonprofit organizations (particularly the Episcopalian ministry that the author tagged along with while researching the book) may be in their desire to assist workers, their needs far outweigh the available charity. One worker, for example, was given a bag of ground coffee from a local church, but it sat unused on his shelf, since he had no way to brew it.
Using interviews with more than 80 farmworkers, in addition to the “few growers willing to speak with me,” Durbin has assembled a revealing look into the lived experiences of guest workers. The author is nonpartisan in his analysis of the complexities of U.S. immigration policy; while emphasizing the “extraordinary sacrifices” made by farmworkers with H-2A visas, Durbin makes a compelling case that “we as a nation can honor that sacrifice” by improving guest workers’ working and living conditions. The author of multiple books on financial derivatives who has taught at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and spent a career in software engineering for the banking industry, Durbin presents poignant anecdotes accompanied by impressive quantitative analyses backed by more than 20 pages of citations and bibliographic entries. Graphs, charts, and other visual aids accompany each chapter, making the more analytical passages accessible for nonacademic readers.
A powerful, well-researched survey of the lives of agricultural guest workers.Pub Date: June 24, 2024
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 9, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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