A powerful, urgent plea for individual responsibility in an unjust world.
Small steps toward a just world.
Benjamin, a professor of African American studies at Princeton, offers an impassioned argument for the need to foster the “deep-rooted interdependence” that characterizes strong communities and to counter the ableism, sexism, racism, and classism that lead to injustice and inequality. Besides drawing on the findings of sociologists, epidemiologists, educators, and historians, among others, Benjamin shares her own experiences as the daughter of a Black American father and Indian-born mother of Persian descent, as well as the experiences of her family and friends, to expose the effects of racism in education, health care, policing and punishment, housing, economic opportunity, political participation, and scientific research. The victimization of her mentally ill brother by a “ravenous carceral system” informs her vision of police reform that would divert funding to housing, education, and community support. Turning to education, she exposes the “myth of meritocracy”—the idea that hard work and innate talent always lead to educational and professional success. In an “apartheid-like system” of education that is organized by race and class, success unfortunately breeds entitlement and “elitist delusions of specialness” rather than an awareness that achievement depends on luck: where, to whom, and in what economic stratum you were born. Benjamin reveals racism in hospitals, doctors’ offices, and the designs of research studies, where Black bodies are probed and tested but not provided adequate health care based on the outcomes of research. Impatient with the “datafication of injustice,” she claims we do not need more studies or more evidence. We need only the will to look at ourselves and “to individually confront how we participate in unjust systems.” Viral justice, argues the author convincingly, entails a redistribution of resources to overcome inequality and to create “communities of care” that support everyone’s needs. Each of us, she writes, must “question the roles and narrative you’ve inherited, and scheme with others to seed a different world.”
A powerful, urgent plea for individual responsibility in an unjust world.Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-691-22288-2
Page Count: 392
Publisher: Princeton Univ.
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2022
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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