A bipartisan and commonsensical study of U.S. disharmony, though somewhat lacking in originality.
A book delivers a synopsis of the cleavages that divide Americans and some potential solutions.
One of the most scrupulously studied of subjects in American political discourse is citizens’ toxic divisiveness, something that could, according to Brakke (American Justice?, 2016), bring about the nation’s demise. He provides a taxonomy of the various species of disunity that plague the United States, including more obvious ones like racial and economic division, and less frequently discussed ones such as the disharmony engendered by generational and geographical differences. In the case of racial tension, the author situates the problem within its long-standing historical context, assessing the ways in which race-based enmity has been fostered since the nation’s genesis. Brakke also furnishes an analysis of the resentful tug-of war between cosmopolitan cities and the rural areas that lie beyond their perimeters. In each section, the author summarizes the problem, presenting the viewpoint from either side, and then supplies some candidate solutions. For example, within a discussion of the increasingly wide distance that separates the old and the young in the United States, Brakke suggests dispensing a tax credit to fully grown children who are willing to live with and care for their aging parents. In addition, while assessing the obstinate problem of racial tension in the country, he draws from the example of the military, which has managed to successfully combat segregation without resorting to any controversial affirmative action program. The cogent theme underlying the entire study is that while the fracturing of the nation into warring parts threatens its existence, there remains hope in the many ways those factions still depend upon one another. Brakke’s prose couldn’t be clearer—he writes with informality and intellectual temperance. In addition, it’s refreshing to see a work that addresses American divisiveness explore territory beyond race, wealth, and political affiliation. But the solutions the author offers don’t break much new ground, and can be as exasperatingly general as they are obvious. For example, as an antidote to racial tension, he counsels: “Anything that would reduce poverty in the urban ghettos would certainly help.”
A bipartisan and commonsensical study of U.S. disharmony, though somewhat lacking in originality.Pub Date: June 19, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-947466-07-4
Page Count: 74
Publisher: American Leadership Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.
A light-speed tour of (mostly) Western poetry, from the 4,000-year-old Gilgamesh to the work of Australian poet Les Murray, who died in 2019.
In the latest entry in the publisher’s Little Histories series, Carey, an emeritus professor at Oxford whose books include What Good Are the Arts? and The Unexpected Professor: An Oxford Life in Books, offers a quick definition of poetry—“relates to language as music relates to noise. It is language made special”—before diving in to poetry’s vast history. In most chapters, the author deals with only a few writers, but as the narrative progresses, he finds himself forced to deal with far more than a handful. In his chapter on 20th-century political poets, for example, he talks about 14 writers in seven pages. Carey displays a determination to inform us about who the best poets were—and what their best poems were. The word “greatest” appears continually; Chaucer was “the greatest medieval English poet,” and Langston Hughes was “the greatest male poet” of the Harlem Renaissance. For readers who need a refresher—or suggestions for the nightstand—Carey provides the best-known names and the most celebrated poems, including Paradise Lost (about which the author has written extensively), “Kubla Khan,” “Ozymandias,” “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads, which “changed the course of English poetry.” Carey explains some poetic technique (Hopkins’ “sprung rhythm”) and pauses occasionally to provide autobiographical tidbits—e.g., John Masefield, who wrote the famous “Sea Fever,” “hated the sea.” We learn, as well, about the sexuality of some poets (Auden was bisexual), and, especially later on, Carey discusses the demons that drove some of them, Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath among them. Refreshingly, he includes many women in the volume—all the way back to Sappho—and has especially kind words for Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop, who share a chapter.
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-23222-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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