A powerful, much-needed political and social analysis that all lovers of democracy should read.
An alarming but useful perspective on antiliberalism.
According to this timely, well-informed analysis, there is nothing new in the Trump populist movement, save for Trump himself. Kagan, a neoconservative scholar and author of The Ghost at the Feast and The World America Made, demonstrates that the forces of antiliberalism and white supremacy, which extend from the Revolutionary period to today, have never disappeared. Rather, they merely accepted what they were forced to accept—liberal democratic government as established by the Founders—until political and cultural conditions allowed rebellion to flourish once more. The polarized 2024 political landscape bears a striking resemblance to the years immediately preceding the Civil War, writes Kagan, a Washington Post columnist and foreign policy adviser to both Republican and Democratic administrations. The author warns that the coming election may determine whether liberal democracy will survive the new surge in antiliberalism, its racist underpinnings, and the authoritarian, vengeful impulse demonstrated by Trump. This struggle between liberal democracy and those fundamentally opposed to it also continues to shape international politics. In relating how democratic government cannot endure when half the country does not believe in the core principles that undergird the American system, Kagan’s survey, not generally given to dire pronouncements, seems overheated at times. Some readers may question his assurance that Trump is a unique, unrepeatable phenomenon or that Trumpism and the greatest risks to the republic will dissipate with his passing from the scene. Nonetheless, Kagan cogently examines the bright long-term prospects for the Founders’ concept of liberalism, especially with the nation’s rapidly changing demographics—if Trump does not win the election. The author also points out where modern American liberalism is failing, not least in the antiliberal excesses of its progressive wing, and how they fan the antiliberal blaze.
A powerful, much-needed political and social analysis that all lovers of democracy should read.Pub Date: April 30, 2024
ISBN: 9780593535783
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
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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