Wilentz’s book, though very long, wastes no words. A well-crafted, highly readable political history.
Is the U.S. a democracy, or a republic? As Wilentz (History/Princeton Univ.) shows in this sprawling account, Americans debated the issue from the post-revolutionary era to the Civil War.
In classical terms, a republic is governed “through the ministrations of the most worthy, enlightened men,” whereas a democracy “dangerously handed power to the impassioned, unenlightened masses.” One-time revolutionary firebrand Noah Webster so mistrusted the mob that, he thundered, had he foreseen popular rule, he would never have fought for freedom; even Thomas Jefferson, that most impassioned of democrats, allowed that given a free choice, the public chose wrongly more often than not. Democracy as such was an oxymoron, Wilentz observes, with power limited to white propertied men in the early days of the republic; the extension of rights throughout the 19th century to a wider polity was a matter of fierce fighting, and eventually war. The battle over just who was to be in charge began almost as soon as national freedom was achieved, an early test, Wilentz writes, being the Whisky Rebellion of 1794, fought by country people against an excise tax on distilled liquor imposed by urbanite arch-republican Alexander Hamilton. As the contest expanded, Wilentz notes, some of the differences between country and city people gave way to other divisions, and by the time Andrew Jackson ran for office in 1824, the gulf between North and South was beginning to widen (as, for a time, was that between those who believed in a cash economy and those who argued for the merits of credit). Abraham Lincoln, though deeply committed to democratic values, would insist on the supremacy of federal over states’ rights, while the nominally democratic leaders of the South meant to exalt “the supreme political power of local elites.” Wilentz shows that none of these battles was new when Lincoln took office; in some respects, they are still being fought today.
Wilentz’s book, though very long, wastes no words. A well-crafted, highly readable political history.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-393-05820-4
Page Count: 992
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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