A disappointing take on what America’s working women need.
The founder of Girls Who Code calls for a “radical reinvention” of the American workplace in ways that would help mothers and other women.
Saujani writes that when she wrote Brave, Not Perfect (2019), she “was still in the throes of promoting the feminist propaganda of having it all via leaning in.” Her view changed during the pandemic—which exposed social and emotional fault lines in her life and others’ and which forced 12 million women from the labor force—and here, she adjusts her course. Expanding an essay for The Hill that called for a “Marshall Plan for Moms,” the author proposes a sweeping array of solutions in an uninspired book comprised of part rant, part self-help, and part “call to action” rooted in three “critical public policies”: affordable child care, paid parental leave, and cash payments to parents. Many ideas appear on bulleted lists called a “Playbook for Employers” and “What Women Can Do,” and while some are worthy, too many are overfamiliar, underdeveloped, or unimaginative. (Managers should “Lead by example,” and women should “Get enough sleep,” an idea that may seem ludicrously impractical to any mother of a 6-month-old.) The writing is merely serviceable, and many of Saujani’s ideas are surprisingly conservative or tame. She never suggests, for example, that working mothers might benefit from joining a labor union or pushing for a higher minimum wage. Worse, while Saujani pays lip service to second-wave feminists’ efforts, she slights them in subtle and seemingly ill-informed ways. For example, she writes that feminists “forgot” to work for “equality in the home via compensation for the unpaid labor we do.” In fact, they fought for it on many fronts, including, among numerous other examples, the Wages for Housework campaign. Saujani mentions her important work with Girls Who Code only briefly; a more enlightening book would have more deeply explored what that experience taught her.
A disappointing take on what America’s working women need.Pub Date: March 15, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-982191-57-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: One Signal/Atria
Review Posted Online: Jan. 17, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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