Catnip for election watchers and politics junkies, who will want to reread the book when the dust of 2020 settles.
Why did Hillary Clinton lose the 2016 presidential election? This book deconstructs the many competing explanations—and shows why they matter in 2020.
Early on, political scientist Masket writes that the book was supposed to be about the Republicans’ shattering loss in the 2016 election, asking “how a patently unelectable candidate like Donald Trump somehow got the nomination and cost them an election that was obviously theirs to win.” It didn’t work out that way, leaving the Democrats to wonder how their eminently well-suited candidate failed to capture the White House. Many narratives were offered: The American public is sexist at the core. Clinton was out of touch with ordinary people. Voters rejected insider politics. Trump’s victory was a fluke. Then—though Masket doesn’t belabor the point—there were Comey, WikiLeaks, and the Russians. All these competing narratives have merited serious conversation. Analyzing them—while saying that the narratives themselves are less important than the interpretations—Masket examines how party politics work: The candidate is usually decided on well before the primaries ever begin, the polity is so polarized that landslides no longer occur, and campaigns are steadily less important than other vehicles of messaging. One critique is that Clinton should have campaigned harder in swing states, but, the author counters, she went all out in Pennsylvania and wound up losing by about a point all the same. “If all that campaign effort couldn’t save her in Pennsylvania, why would we think it would matter in Wisconsin?” he asks. In short, he notes, “there was no consensus explanation of 2016.” Looking at identity politics, messaging, coalition-building, the representation of minority and women voters, and the power of party elites, Masket concludes that by all measures, the Democratic Party is “actually a stronger party than the GOP.”
Catnip for election watchers and politics junkies, who will want to reread the book when the dust of 2020 settles.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-108-48212-7
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Cambridge Univ.
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2020
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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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