A buoyant, historically astute appreciation of political persistence.
The hard work of making a better future.
Readers seeking reasons for hope in tumultuous times will find many in the latest from the author of Men Explain Things to Me. Solnit’s essays about climate change, toxic masculinity, income inequality, and other subjects are paeans to “patience, endurance, and long-term vision,” which she believes are essential to lasting political change. Solnit is a deft connector of historical dots. In one inspired essay, she demonstrates how 21st-century activists organized durable movements that moved centrist politicians toward progressive remedies on problems as varied as water usage and debt relief. Occupy Wall Street, launched in 2011, recognized that theirs would be a protracted fight, one that yielded tangible results in the 2020s, when politicians launched student loan forgiveness initiatives. More than two centuries ago, Solnit notes, John Adams detected a not dissimilar chain of events, writing that the American Revolution “was effected from 1760 to 1775.” Solnit describes climate change as “a moral crisis” and “a storytelling crisis.” Cynics may chuckle when she quotes a climate writer who says that “what we desperately need is more artists” to help create “a new world,” but Solnit offers a galvanizing vision for healing the planet, one that prizes community over material goods. A more humane definition of wealth, she writes, would foreground enriching relationships with nature and friends. This isn’t an autobiographical book, but the personal details Solnit shares suggest a very interesting person. She was “an antinuclear activist” and counts among her friends a death row inmate, a mushroom collector, and a violin maker. The latter appears in the book’s warmest essay, about the durability of a 300-year-old violin still played by a prominent musician. Fittingly, the instrument is “both a relic and a promise.”
A buoyant, historically astute appreciation of political persistence.Pub Date: May 13, 2025
ISBN: 9798888903636
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Haymarket Books
Review Posted Online: March 21, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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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