A sensible, encouraging account of progress (if not a “revolution”) in feeding hungry children.
A heartening survey of what good people are doing to help end childhood hunger.
Russell writes that nearly 1 in 4 children under the age of 5 are malnourished, or “stunted.” If this persists, they grow into stunted adults. Mixing history, nutrition science, interviews with experts, and accounts of her visits to aid organizations and projects (with a focus on Malawi), the author delivers an engrossing, modestly optimistic narrative about a sadly evergreen issue. Although most victims of malnourishment grow up in poverty, notes the author, adequate food is often available for adults. In many cases, external circumstances condemn their children. With no time to breastfeed for the first six months, overworked mothers introduce solid food too early, usually non-nutritious gruel containing local water and local germs. In Africa, diarrhea causes the most deaths among poor children. Another unnerving fact is how badly humanitarians performed for decades after World War II. The accepted aid method was to ship food to needy nations and set up feeding stations. However, many couldn’t reach the stations, and severely malnourished children received dense, calorie-rich food that did more harm than good. By the 1990s, organizations learned to use what was working based on scientific research and help as many people as possible. In Malawi, one of the world’s poorest countries, Russell introduces us to a legion of international humanitarian groups striving to feed children, educate and empower mothers, and teach hardscrabble farmers to grow more nutritious crops more efficiently. The author devotes much attention to entrepreneurs working to produce tasty, highly nutritious snacks that appeal to children at a low but profitable cost. Readers may have mixed feelings over the emphasis on private enterprise, but with humanitarian groups overstretched and leaders in many developing nations largely indifferent, there are few alternatives. As the author notes, “there is no standardized approach to any problem.”
A sensible, encouraging account of progress (if not a “revolution”) in feeding hungry children.Pub Date: April 6, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5247-4724-4
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2021
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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