A damning and depressing indictment sure to incite controversy.
A veteran journalist decries a lack of responsible reporting.
Investigative journalist Attkisson, winner of five Emmy Awards, mounts a hard-hitting, if hardly novel, critique of the media, which she sees as manipulated and manipulative. Right now, “versions of history and current events are being written and revised in real time according to what powerful interests wish them to say.” Facts that support “The Narrative” are deemed newsworthy while other facts are buried. Instead of doing research and presenting opposing views, writes the author, “a new breed of reporter” aims “to convince you to believe whatever they personally believe.” Attkisson reports her own frustrating experiences at CBS, where her stories were repeatedly quashed and her reporting attacked; although executives wanted her to stay, she left before her contract expired in 2014. Areas where the author identifies egregious bias include the #MeToo movement, the Russia investigation, and biased pollsters; regarding the last, if results “are off trend,” the media discount them. Trump, however, has become “the vehicle that the media at large has used to unleash its furor and redefine journalism in a way it was never defined before,” and Attkisson finds much evidence for ways in which news outlets misquote or misconstrue Trump’s statements. Rarely, though, does she take Trump to task for his many proven lies. The author appends a long list of “major mistakes” about Trump propagated by news sources. These include “photos of immigrant children in cages as if they were new photos taken during the Trump administration” when they were “from 2014 during the Obama administration.” The media condemned Trump for saying, “It’s not our problem,” when referring to Turkey’s assault on Syria, when he said, “It’s not our border.” Attkisson reveals that in 1999, “Gallup found trust in mass media at 55 percent. It had plummeted to 40 percent in 2014.” To counter an even greater dip, the author includes a list of outlets and reporters that she considers trustworthy.
A damning and depressing indictment sure to incite controversy.Pub Date: Nov. 24, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-297469-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 7, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2020
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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