A challenging but soaringly optimistic blueprint for upgrading the human race.
A sweeping view of how to improving the world through better communication.
Waters frankly admits that the claims he makes about educating the world by making people “guise-wise” (i.e., heightening their awareness of how they perceive others and how others perceive them) make him sound “absurdly ambitious and…like either a fruit-case or someone with a very bloated ego,” but he’s convinced that he’s discerned the central problem underlying most of humanity’s problems—people either can’t or won’t shift their identities, which informs the ways they view the world. Humanity’s “Response Default Setting,” he claims, is to notice and then emphasize (even magnify) difference, all in the service of tribalism. This “default setting” is behind all the ills humans import into the world, the “demonization, dehumanization and genocide.” Here, Waters, a consultant and coach, expands on his belief that only by addressing this universal internal setting and changing it to something more broad can humanity survive and advance from its current state. “From family feuding to global warming, our problems aren’t just of our own making, they are of our own make-up,” he writes. “This means they will persist as long as we stay as we are.” In order to fix these problems, he asserts that people must exercise far more awareness of their commonalities to move all of humanity through an “upgrade.” Waters writes in an engaging style that’s both clear and substantive: “Messages are generally injunctions,” he warns at one point. “They tell us to believe or do something, but they don’t require us to engage or act in line with them.” At every turn, he respects his readers’ intelligence and is fully aware that he’s presenting a perhaps unrealistic solution for impossibly complex world problems. His calm, nonjudgmental synthesis will give readers food for thought, though, even if his one-trick fix remains ultimately unconvincing.
A challenging but soaringly optimistic blueprint for upgrading the human race.Pub Date: May 16, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-80074-286-4
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Olympia Publishers
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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 familiar format, but a timely reminder that cities are made up of individuals, each with their own stories.
Portraits in a post-pandemic world.
After the Covid-19 lockdowns left New York City’s streets empty, many claimed that the city was “gone forever.” It was those words that inspired Stanton, whose previous collections include Humans of New York (2013), Humans of New York: Stories (2015), and Humans (2020), to return to the well once more for a new love letter to the city’s humanity and diversity. Beautifully laid out in hardcover with crisp, bright images, each portrait of a New Yorker is accompanied by sparse but potent quotes from Stanton’s interviews with his subjects. Early in the book, the author sequences three portraits—a couple laughing, then looking serious, then the woman with tears in her eyes—as they recount the arc of their relationship, transforming each emotional beat of their story into an affecting visual narrative. In another, an unhoused man sits on the street, his husky eating out of his hand. The caption: “I’m a late bloomer.” Though the pandemic isn’t mentioned often, Stanton focuses much of the book on optimistic stories of the post-pandemic era. Among the most notable profiles is Myles Smutney, founder of the Free Store Project, whose story of reclaiming boarded‑up buildings during the lockdowns speaks to the city’s resilience. In reusing the same formula from his previous books, the author confirms his thesis: New York isn’t going anywhere. As he writes in his lyrical prologue, “Just as one might dive among coral reefs to marvel at nature, one can come to New York City to marvel at humanity.” The book’s optimism paints New York as a city where diverse lives converge in moments of beauty, joy, and collective hope.
A familiar format, but a timely reminder that cities are made up of individuals, each with their own stories.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781250277589
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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