A sound, well-researched attempt to trace the fracturing of American politics.
A history book offers a reevaluation of the polarization in United States society and politics.
“Hunkered down at home” during 2020’s Covid-19 quarantines, Radwell grappled with reconciling the harsh realities of the pandemic and politics in the Donald Trump era with his lifelong idealized version of America as a beacon of liberty and “a land of opportunity.” As he fell into “a profound state of disillusionment,” the author dusted off history books from his college days at Columbia and Harvard and concluded there “really are two different Americas” and that the nation has been divided for centuries. Indeed, Radwell’s analysis begins in 18th-century Europe, where he finds Enlightenment thinkers divided between radicals, who sought a complete overhaul of the “rigid societal structure” of the continent’s aristocratic system, and moderates, who supported certain intellectual and societal reforms while maintaining the hierarchies. As the Enlightenment spread to America’s Founding Fathers during the Revolutionary War era, so too did its two divisions, which the book expertly tracks from constitutional debates in the 1780s through the civil rights movement and the conservative resurgence of the 20th century. The volume’s final section centers on solutions to “healing the American schism” that seriously call for a return to Enlightenment ideals, suggesting that “reasoned analysis and sound historical perspective” can overcome the “irrational political discourse that is raging at present.” Though Trump and his supporters are not spared the author’s ire, those on the left are also admonished for participating “in the mayhem that is today’s social media.” Though none of the history covered in the work will be particularly revelatory to scholars, Radwell—the former president of e-Scholastic children’s publishing—offers general readers a rigorously researched book. The endnotes and bibliography rival academic tomes, but the volume is deliberately written as “a more accessible history” for neophytes. Despite the book’s impressive breadth and engaging analysis, its emphasis on the role of White men is out of step with current social and historiography trends. Similarly, the part played by the Enlightenment in fomenting pseudo-scientific racist theories and social Darwinism is underaddressed.
A sound, well-researched attempt to trace the fracturing of American politics.Pub Date: June 29, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-62-634861-5
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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