Less crystal ball than projection of probabilities, but rewarding, provocative reading for students of demographic trends.
In-depth examination of the end of the baby boom and what it means for younger Americans.
The U.S. is undergoing a great demographic shift. The population explosion of 1946-1964—which required California to open a new school every week through the 1950s, at enormous cost—resulted in a generation that vastly outnumbered its predecessors. Thus the 1960s youth culture, Woodstock, and yuppies. Now, writes Washington Post political columnist Bump, the numbers are changing significantly. “By 2025,” he writes, “most boomers will be aged 65 or over; five years later, they all will [be]. In 2030, boomers are projected to make up about 17 percent of the population, the lowest density since 1955. And, of course, it descends from there.” Many of those boomers cling desperately to power and privilege, often to the detriment of younger generations. There are complications in the picture, though. For one thing, the homegrown boomers were joined, half a century ago, by a huge influx of baby boomer immigrants, swelling their numbers and moderating the present conservative vote. For another, the supposed liberal wave that will supplant boomer conservatives will take time to arrive. While immigrants and their children will indeed make the U.S. a minority-majority country, it will take an extra decade to amass enough citizens with voting rights to make a difference. Regardless, things change, and “for many boomers, those changes seem to be very much not OK.” Consequently, White nationalism and White fear will endure, troubling an already fractious politics. For all that, Bump notes, Trump carried boomers by only 3%, and the Republican brand is going to pay for it. As the author also shows, states demographically most like the future America went overwhelmingly for Biden, those most like the moribund past America, for Trump.
Less crystal ball than projection of probabilities, but rewarding, provocative reading for students of demographic trends.Pub Date: Jan. 17, 2023
ISBN: 978-0-593-48969-7
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 18, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2022
For fans only.
The hoodie-and-shorts-clad Pennsylvania senator blends the political and personal, and often not nicely.
Fetterman’s memoir addresses three major themes. The first—and the one he leads with—is depression and mental illness, which, combined with a stroke and heart trouble, brought him to a standstill and led him to contemplate suicide. The second is his rise to national-level politics from a Rust Belt town; as he writes, he’s carved a path as a contentious player with a populist streak and a dislike for elites. There are affecting moments in his personal reminiscences, especially when he writes of the lives of his working-class neighbors in impoverished southwestern Pennsylvania, its once-prosperous Monongahela River Valley “the most heartbreaking drive in the United States.” It’s the third element that’s problematic, and that’s his in-the-trenches account of daily politics. One frequent complaint is the media, as when he writes of one incident, “I am not the first public figure to get fucked by a reporter, and I won’t be the last. What was eye-opening was the window it gave into how people with disabilities navigate a world that doesn’t give a shit.” He reserves special disdain for his Senate race opponent Mehmet Oz, about whom he wonders, “If I had run against any other candidate…would I have lost? He got beaten by a guy recovering from a stroke.” Perhaps so, and Democratic stalwarts will likely be dismayed at his apparent warmish feelings for Donald Trump and dislike of his own party’s “performative protests.” If Fetterman’s book convinces a troubled soul to seek help, it will have done some good, but it’s hard to imagine that it will make much of an impression in the self-help literature. One wonders, meanwhile, at sentiments such as this: “If men are forced to choose between picking their party or keeping their balls, most men are going to choose their balls.”
For fans only.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2025
ISBN: 9780593799826
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
SEEN & HEARD
A dauntless, moving account of a kidnapping and the horrors that followed.
Enduring the unthinkable.
This memoir—the first by an Israeli taken captive by Hamas on October 7, 2023—chronicles the 491 days the author was held in Gaza. Confined to tunnels beneath war-ravaged streets, Sharabi was beaten, humiliated, and underfed. When he was finally released in February, he learned that Hamas had murdered his wife and two daughters. In the face of scarcely imaginable loss, Sharabi has crafted a potent record of his will to survive. The author’s ordeal began when Hamas fighters dragged him from his home, in a kibbutz near Gaza. Alongside others, he was held for months at a time in filthy subterranean spaces. He catalogs sensory assaults with novelistic specificity. Iron shackles grip his ankles. Broken toilets produce an “unbearable stink,” and “tiny white worms” swarm his toothbrush. He gets one meal a day, his “belly caving inward.” Desperate for more food, he stages a fainting episode, using a shaving razor to “slice a deep gash into my eyebrow.” Captors share their sweets while celebrating an Iranian missile attack on Israel. He and other hostages sneak fleeting pleasures, finding and downing an orange soda before a guard can seize it. Several times, Sharabi—51 when he was kidnapped—gives bracing pep talks to younger compatriots. The captives learn to control what they can, trading family stories and “lift[ing] water bottles like dumbbells.” Remarkably, there’s some levity. He and fellow hostages nickname one Hamas guard “the Triangle” because he’s shaped like a SpongeBob SquarePants character. The book’s closing scenes, in which Sharabi tries to console other hostages’ families while learning the worst about his own, are heartbreaking. His captors “are still human beings,” writes Sharabi, bravely modeling the forbearance that our leaders often lack.
A dauntless, moving account of a kidnapping and the horrors that followed.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780063489790
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Harper Influence/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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