An accessible and pointed study in the law of both education and citizenship.
Should a child whose parents entered the country illegally be granted the privilege of enrolling in school here? It’s a question that has excited much discussion—but that has yet to be decided.
Immigration reform is one of those political third rails that can fry an unwary politician, and the thought of granting citizenship to immigrants who have entered the U.S. illegally has divided Congress since at least the Reagan era. And what of their children? As University of Houston law professor Olivas writes, there is widespread support both for a path to citizenship and for the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act and related legislation, which would both grant legal status to such children and allow them to enter school at resident rates of tuition. Residence and domicile are legally not the same thing. The last time the DREAM Act had a chance of passing through Congress unscathed was 2007, Olivas suggests, but it encountered difficulties: Sponsor Edward Kennedy became ill, Arlen Specter backed away from it, and when Barack Obama, another sponsor, entered the White House, he propounded “so many major initiatives” that “all the oxygen in the room was being inhaled.” It wasn’t until 2009 that Janet Napolitano, head of Homeland Security, acknowledged the plight of undocumented children, though she placed emphasis on border security instead. Thus it is that the individual states essentially decide the issue for themselves and are likely to continue to do so until truly comprehensive immigration reform is undertaken at the national level, something unlikely to happen under Donald Trump. Indeed, notes the author, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, sheltering those undocumented children from deportation, has suffered “death by a thousand cuts” under the hostile eye of the Trump system, and the DREAM Act continues to languish, as it has for two decades.
An accessible and pointed study in the law of both education and citizenship.Pub Date: June 30, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4798-7828-4
Page Count: 368
Publisher: New York Univ.
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 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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