A welcome survival manual for those living under an authoritarian regime.
A well-practiced activist offers a program for promoting democratic values in an undemocratic age.
Perryman, president of the nonprofit Democracy Forward, writes that although Americans “don’t like bullies or the rule of kings,” our institutions have failed to keep a certain case in point from shredding established laws and norms. Congress, for instance, has failed to protect existing voting rights, while the Supreme Court has given the president carte blanche with its declaration of immunity from prosecution. In this regard, Perryman writes, “it is not our institutions that will save us…but the people.” Much of her book consists of advice on how to exercise one’s rights as an engaged citizen. The very first step is registering to vote and then voting. At a still more advanced level, Perryman urges her readers to organize town halls, even if their elected officials don’t show up, as is usual these days. In a time when television hosts are being canceled for opposing the administration’s excesses, she also points to the success of threatened boycotts to change corporate minds, at least in the case of Jimmy Kimmel. Given that legacy media, such as The Washington Post, are increasingly fearful of running afoul of the administration, Perryman suggests following independent and especially local media sources to “make certain that you receive factual information that is as free as possible from corporate or government pressure.” (Usefully, she also notes that much so-called news is really opinion, which is “not a substitute for factual reporting.”) On that local front, the author urges her readers to buy local when possible, avoiding the big box stores and online giants. Perhaps the most difficult part of her eminently sensible program is seeking out people whom we might consider political enemies but share interests and common values—on the latter of which she carefully adds, “where they exist.”
A welcome survival manual for those living under an authoritarian regime.Pub Date: Aug. 25, 2026
ISBN: 9798217273997
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Ten Speed Press
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2026
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.
An Egyptian Canadian journalist writes searchingly of this time of war.
“Rules, conventions, morals, reality itself: all exist so long as their existence is convenient to the preservation of power.” So writes El Akkad, who goes on to state that one of the demands of modern power is that those subject to it must imagine that some group of people somewhere are not fully human. El Akkad’s pointed example is Gaza, the current destruction of which, he writes, is causing millions of people around the world to examine the supposedly rules-governed, democratic West and declare, “I want nothing to do with this.” El Akkad, author of the novel American War (2017), discerns hypocrisy and racism in the West’s defense of Ukraine and what he views as indifference toward the Palestinian people. No stranger to war zones himself—El Akkad was a correspondent in Afghanistan and Iraq—he writes with grim matter-of-factness about murdered children, famine, and the deliberate targeting of civilians. With no love for Zionism lost, he offers an equally harsh critique of Hamas, yet another one of the “entities obsessed with violence as an ethos, brutal in their treatment of minority groups who in their view should not exist, and self-decreed to be the true protectors of an entire religion.” Taking a global view, El Akkad, who lives in the U.S., finds almost every government and society wanting, and not least those, he says, that turn away and pretend not to know, behavior that we’ve seen before and that, in the spirit of his title, will one day be explained away until, in the end, it comes down to “a quiet unheard reckoning in the winter of life between the one who said nothing, did nothing, and their own soul.”
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593804148
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The choir is sure to enjoy this impassioned preaching on familiar progressive themes.
Essays on current political topics by a high-profile actor and activist.
Milano explains in an introduction that she began writing this uneven collection while dealing with a severe case of Covid-19 and suffering from "persistent brain fog.” In the first essay, "On Being Unapologetically Fucked Up,” the author begins by fuming over a February 2019 incident in which she compared MAGA caps worn by high school kids to KKK hoods. She then runs through a grab bag of flash-point news items (police shootings, border crimes, sexual predators in government), deploying the F-bomb with abandon and concluding, "What I know is that fucked up is as fundamental a state of the world as night and day. But I know there is better. I know that ‘less fucked up’ is a state we can live in.” The second essay, "Believe Women," discusses Milano’s seminal role in the MeToo movement; unfortunately, it is similarly conversational in tone and predictable in content. One of the few truly personal essays, "David," about the author's marriage, refutes the old saw about love meaning never having to say you're sorry, replacing it with "Love means you can suggest a national sex strike and your husband doesn't run away screaming." Milano assumes, perhaps rightly, that her audience is composed of followers and fans; perhaps these readers will know what she is talking about in the seemingly allegorical "By Any Other Name," about her bad experience with a certain rosebush. "Holy shit, giving birth sucked," begins one essay. "Words are weird, right?" begins the next. "Welp, this is going to piss some of you off. Hang in there," opens a screed about cancel culture—though she’s entirely correct that “it’s childish, divisive, conceited, and Trumpian to its core.” By the end, however, Milano's intelligence, compassion, integrity, and endurance somewhat compensate for her lack of literary polish.
The choir is sure to enjoy this impassioned preaching on familiar progressive themes.Pub Date: Oct. 26, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-18329-8
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
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