Valuable reading for voting rights advocates.
A study of the practice of shaping electoral districts to ensure electoral victory.
How did Scott Walker, who lost the popular vote for governor of Wisconsin in 2018 by some 30,000 votes, still carry nearly two-thirds of the state’s assembly and senate districts? The answer is simple: gerrymandering—and, as political scientist Seabrook observes, “one of the most egregious instances of gerrymandering in American history.” He adds that gerrymandering is a fundamentally undemocratic practice that privileges some votes over others, especially the moneyed, well-connected, White, and conservative. Seabrook traces the history of gerrymandering beyond its supposedly American origins to the English tradition of “rotten boroughs,” dating to the 13th century, with small numbers of voters attaining electoral power out of proportion to their numbers and members of Parliament propped up by corrupt measures. Things haven’t changed much over time. As Seabrook notes, the 19th century was the heyday of gerrymandering as practiced by nearly every party, so that in one Ohio election, as a contemporary observed, if the Whigs won the state by 10,000 votes, they would still earn only seven congressional representatives while their opponents would have twice as many with the same count. Seabrook shows how gerrymandering has been practiced by both major parties in recent years, with procedural road maps now followed by the GOP often laid out by their Democratic predecessors. Led by the GOP, redistricting is ongoing across the country today, largely with an eye to being sure that districts are “safe”—read: rotten—and, through disenfranchisement measures, not susceptible to being turned by unwanted minorities. In a concluding call to action, the author writes: “How much do you really know about redistricting in your state? If the answer is not much, well, that’s what the career politicians already huddling behind the scenes with teams of redistricting professionals, attorneys, political scientists, and strategists are hoping for. Democracy dies in darkness.”
Valuable reading for voting rights advocates.Pub Date: June 14, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-31586-6
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: March 18, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
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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