Written with the authority of experience, this book offers a viable path to true recovery.
The renowned psychiatrist shows us how coming to terms with the pandemic requires a change in thinking.
National Book Award winner Lifton, now 97, has written scores of books, mainly dealing with the effects of trauma. He believes that our society has yet to fully come to terms with the Covid-19 pandemic and its enormous consequences. He draws on the stories of Hiroshima survivors (the subject of his classic 1968 book, Death in Life), Vietnam veterans, and Holocaust survivors to illustrate the importance of finding meaning as a crucial part of psychological recovery—and physical recovery for those dealing with the long-term effects of the disease. Recovery is by no means easy, and the Hiroshima survivors (known in Japan as hibakusha, “explosion-affected persons”) had to deal with feelings of guilt as well as the loss of loved ones. Some became activists campaigning against nuclear weapons, and others became artists or writers. The Hiroshima Peace Memorial, a half-destroyed building, provided a focal point for individual and communal mourning. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., is another example of how national traumas can be given expression. As such, a lasting monument to the pandemic victims, as proposed by the activist survivor organization Marked by Covid, among other entities, could help the nation move through the grieving process. A national day of remembrance would also provide a sense of unity. However, Lifton argues lucidly that the real key to recovery from the pandemic is a fundamental change in our collective mindset. We must move toward "the formation of a sense of self based significantly upon one’s connection to humankind.” In a thoughtful, pithy, and inspiring narrative, the author shows how “catastrophe calls on us to bring the mind to bear upon the most unpalatable truths of our historical epoch, to expand the limits of imagination on behalf of survival.”
Written with the authority of experience, this book offers a viable path to true recovery.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9781620978153
Page Count: 192
Publisher: The New Press
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2023
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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