An ambitious political work that delivers some familiar arguments.
A writer offers a diagnosis of American decline combined with an urgent call for a return to the nation’s founding principles.
Debut author Roberts begins his study with a now-familiar analysis of America’s ailments: rising national and personal debt, skyrocketing prices, the receding prospects for comfortable retirement, endless wars, and, of course, the relentlessly rancorous partisanship. But the problem, he avers, is not the country at large but a dysfunctional political system that nearly guarantees legislative paralysis and incentivizes lawmakers to prioritize their own narrowly conceived interests and those of their financial backers over the collective interests of the nation. His central recommendation is a resuscitation of the original principles that produced American greatness, tested and proven by time: “It means that we hold core principles. It means that we agree on the foundation and are willing to build upward from there. It means that the country comes before party and ideology and profit. It means that Americans look around at each other and understand that though we are flawed, we are family.” Roberts presents a wide-ranging discussion of myriad issues—health care, foreign policy, electoral finance, energy independence—but, for the most part, delivers short treatments, with some of the topics only warranting brief paragraphs. His chief intention seems to be the painting of a very broad picture rather than the production of a rigorous, detailed analysis. But he manages to deftly blend a grim assessment of the nation’s present circumstances with a hopeful sense of the future it can achieve.
Despite their brevity, most of Roberts’ proposals, whether or not ultimately correct, are defensibly sensible; for example, he emphasizes the significance of term limits for elected officials. In consistently accessible prose, he dispenses counsel that ranges somewhere between intriguing and platitudinous. For example, he encourages American citizens to pay their taxes, exercise tolerance for others, and safeguard their health. Other suggestions are far more captivating and less shopworn: He advocates a “one-time kickstart” for citizens that essentially provides three months of sweeping financial relief, including a reprieve from paying rent and health care, day care, and utilities bills, among other fees. Occasionally, the author misses the mark, unwisely coupling a sweeping generalization with a deficit of intellectual argument: “Whatever the reasons, well-intentioned or self-applied, the hyphen keeps us apart, as it serves more and more to highlight differences. Getting rid of it is one step in bringing us together. Our soldiers defend all of us without distinction.” Among the many problems with this recommendation, which is declared rather than defended, is that he supplies no route to its accomplishment. But this is the central failing of the work as a whole—it reads more like a sermon than a meticulous investigation, heavy on solutions confidently stated and light on evidentiary substantiation. Even the repeated references to the country’s founders exhibits this defect—he inaccurately treats that generation as philosophically monolithic, and never precisely defines what their views amounted to.
An ambitious political work that delivers some familiar arguments.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-9985590-4-9
Page Count: 104
Publisher: Sons of Joy, LLC
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2020
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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