In a thoughtful history of the Amendments to the Constitution, Bernstein (New York Law School) and Agel (coauthor with Bernstein of the YA title The Congress, 1987, etc.) point out that America is unique among nations with written constitutions in that its Constitution is central to the country's national identity. They also ask though fail to answer the question: ``Are we truly aware of the consequences of `amending America'?'' The authors focus on Article V, which sets forth the formal procedure for amendment. They seem aware of, but fail to discuss in depth, the equally transformative effect upon the Constitution of political events and judicial decisions, notably the jurisprudence of the post-New Deal era, which has established new civil liberties and given Congress broad-ranging power to regulate the nation's economic life. Bernstein and Agel recount the efforts to find a practical and flexible alternative to the amendment procedure of the Articles of Confederation (which, requiring unanimity, was unworkable); James Madison's victorious 1789 struggle to ratify the Bill of Rights; the early constitutional crises that resulted in the Eleventh and Twelfth Amendments, prohibiting federal suits against states and revising the procedure for electing the President; the important Civil War-era Amendments; and the progressive political movements that led to the early ``democratizing'' Amendments (among them, those dictating the popular election of US senators, enabling passage of the income tax, and giving suffrage to women). The authors' historical survey demonstrates that, while resolution of purely political questions through the Constitution (as in the Eighteenth Amendment's enacting Prohibition) has been unsuccessful, the Constitution owes its vitality to its ability to respond to the rapidly changing nature of American society. An excellent delineation of issues debated by modern constitutional scholars—though the authors' unwillingness to attempt to resolve these issues can be frustrating.
Pub Date: March 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-8129-2038-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Times/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1993
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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