A road map for effective, well-considered policy.
Classical drama provides crucial lessons for policymakers.
Kaplan has had an impressive career: many years as a journalist reporting on the Middle East, author of numerous books on international affairs, and many years working in high-level think tanks. Consequently, it may seem strange that he begins this meditative narrative with an admission of a mistake that still haunts him. He saw the regime of Saddam Hussein firsthand and believed it was so awful that it had to be removed. Consequently, he supported the U.S. invasion, but the anarchy that followed, he admits, was even worse. This led him to the conclusion that order, even that imposed by dictators, was preferable to chaos in all but a few extreme cases. Kaplan suggests that presidents and policymakers should look to Greek classical dramas and Shakespeare’s plays to understand the importance of considering the consequences of actions and the limits of power. The tragic mind, in this sense, is one that is aware of itself and of the contrariness of human events. He cites George H.W. Bush as the last president with this sort of depth. After him, presidents have been quick to send troops to one hot spot or another, always with good intentions but with little in the way of positive outcomes. Military involvement should be a last resort, used only as a response to true evil, such as the Nazi regime. In fact, the author notes that the idea of evil has been devalued through overuse. “Every villain is not Hitler,” he writes, “and every year is not 1939….Passion should not be allowed to distort analysis, even as social media does exactly that.” Kaplan can often sound pompous and old-fashioned (not a new criticism), but the advice that military actions should be carefully thought through, and then thought through again, should be heeded by anyone who contributes to making life-and-death decisions.
A road map for effective, well-considered policy.Pub Date: Jan. 17, 2023
ISBN: 978-0-300-26386-2
Page Count: 152
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2022
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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