A thoughtful recipe for building social justice by being less judgmental.
A Harvard sociologist examines how inequality plays out in categorizing people in such a way as to render some voiceless—and effectively invisible.
Lamont, the author of How Professors Think and The Dignity of Working Men, is a longtime student of inequality and marginalization, and she shows how both have helped promote “some of the factors driving the far right and white nationalism.” Attitudes toward marginalized communities are malleable, notes the author, precisely because they are artificial constructs. For example, “in 1973…90 percent of Americans disapproved of homosexual relations, but by 2019 that number had fallen to 21 percent.” Much of society seemed to say, “we see you; we value you, and we invite you to take a seat at the table alongside us.” Now, with economic precarity and the feeling of so many middle-class Americans that they are losing ground to people they perceive to be less worthy, such a declaration is more needed than ever to destigmatize poor, immigrant, and outlier communities—and, she adds, for those in more comfortable circumstances to try to stop denigrating those who are struggling, regardless of political affiliation. “All of these—narratives, stigmas, stereotypes, and social hierarchies—are produced by human beings and thus changeable,” writes Lamont. Although the prescription is doubtless one that many people on all sides will find difficult, the author believes “we can all cultivate a wider range of friends and relationships across class and racial boundaries,” which may help reduce automatic, negative reactions to those who are “perceived as the losers of the system.” There’s no Pollyannaism in Lamont’s decidedly left-leaning program, though one wonders whether, given the increased divisiveness of America, it’s in any way practical. One hopes. Though not as deeply insightful, Lamont’s book complements Anand Giridharadas’ The Persuaders.
A thoughtful recipe for building social justice by being less judgmental.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9781982153786
Page Count: 272
Publisher: One Signal/Atria
Review Posted Online: July 5, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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