A thoughtful, thorough analysis geared toward African-American leaders and educators that offers limited readability for a...
Former high school math teacher Reverend Rufus Phillips explores the root challenges of African-American’s self-actualization in this blend of memoir and sociological study.
Composed of “case studies” from his public school classroom, Phillips zeros in on two obstacles to academic success for African-Americans, or “soul people,” as he says. One of his conflicts centers on “experiential” rather than “abstract” expression styles. He offers the example of an African-American girl commenting on the weather by saying “It’s cooold outside” rather than “It’s extremely cold.” Another obstacle is a tendency to value the community more than the individual. Consequently, he theorizes, the model of independent success and single-minded competition that drives many Americans does not inspire many black Americans, particularly females. By reframing his pedagogical approach around these observations, Phillips details how he was able to reach certain students who’d appeared to be academically hopeless. Some of what Phillips describes as an African-American student’s dilemma could be said about many young people, across cultures, who flourish when exposed to alternative learning methods and flounder under the static approach of standard public school education. But Phillips goes deeper to show how this alienation takes a toll on his students’ confidence and their larger individual and cultural identities. In order to rise to their true potential, Phillips believes that African-Americans must nourish their dual identities and embrace both immediate and abstract communication styles, learn how to be both pro-individual and pro-community, and own both their heritage as the oppressed and their present reality as privileged members of a “Euro-American” society. Further, he advises forgiveness, because to live with anger toward white America fosters a damaging “moral philosophy based on victimization.” This text is carefully constructed with considered observations and support drawn from a variety of sources and thinkers. Phillips can be commended for not injecting any pop-culture fluff or oversimplifying his message, but as a whole, the book lacks fluidity and intuitive organization.
A thoughtful, thorough analysis geared toward African-American leaders and educators that offers limited readability for a general audience.Pub Date: March 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-1468566123
Page Count: 240
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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