Readers with a taste for aggrieved hyperventilation will find plenty of it here.
A conservative treatise on power and politics as extensions of evolution.
“A society operates under two sets of rules,” writes science journalist Wade. One set has a basis in natural selection, and the other is created by politics. By Wade’s account, the two sets are now at war with each other: Whereas it is a biological imperative to keep the species alive, for example, world birth rates have dropped past the level of replacement, with the result that “almost every country outside Africa [is] on the path to eventual extinction.” This is all by way of prelude to Wade’s apparent larger purpose, which is to find fault with nearly every aspect of progressive politics, from DEI to women’s liberation, critical theory, and so forth. Although Wade paints himself into a corner by allowing that if conservatism has a biological/evolutionary basis, then there must be an adaptive advantage to liberalism as well, he insists on traditional mores: The family, he argues, is the primary social unit; socialism is in “fundamental conflict with human nature”; monogamy is unnatural (for males, in any event), while women “intrigue among themselves for the pick of available men.” Drawing on sociobiology (which, he laments, was driven from the intellectual marketplace by censorious liberals), Wade looks at the politics of other primate species to conclude that while a chimpanzee may not understand why it’s better to be high-status than low-status, it will strive for the highest status it can attain. So, he proceeds, it is with humans, measured by strength and wealth. Naturally, this is the purview of men—real men, that is, and not “a small minority of people with variant sexual orientations,” and certainly not women, and especially not female academic administrators, whose “principal function…is to diminish the success of white male applicants in applying for faculty positions.”
Readers with a taste for aggrieved hyperventilation will find plenty of it here.Pub Date: April 29, 2025
ISBN: 9780063379787
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 28, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2025
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
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Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
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