Fish’s points arrive in thoughtful, dense provocations that will require close attention from readers.
An acclaimed scholar digs into the conventional wisdom about free speech.
Can anybody ever speak or write a controversial truth without consequences flowing from those words? So asks Fish (Humanities and Law/Florida International Univ.; Winning Arguments: What Works and Doesn't Work in Politics, the Bedroom, the Courtroom, and the Classroom, 2016, etc.), and his answer is that nearly always, consequences abound. “The one thing speech isn’t is free,” he writes at the beginning of the first chapter. “There are costs to those who produce it and to those who are subjected to it.” Throughout this brief book, the author challenges those who argue that the First Amendment is a bedrock principle. Fish believes that free speech does not rise to “principle” under the Constitution but rather resides there as a “value”—and values are squishy, dependent on the timing, location, and manner of the speech. When opposing parties argue over a value, writes the author, somebody will ultimately lose the argument—meaning, obviously, that the loser might experience adverse consequences. Fish fills the chapters with controversies, some from actual occurrences and some hypothetical. One real example: Must society give Holocaust deniers an untrammeled voice? If the answer is yes, Holocaust survivors and their descendants suffer pain. If the answer is no, then the free speech of the deniers has been circumscribed. After an introductory chapter explaining that free speech controversies arise because censorship in any society is inevitable, the author uses the remaining four chapters to examine controversial speech from the vantage point of university campuses, organized religion, and the idea of “fake news.” In the epilogue, Fish tackles the question “What Does It All Mean?” For the author, it means that free speech will never be—and should never be—completely free.
Fish’s points arrive in thoughtful, dense provocations that will require close attention from readers.Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-982115-24-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: One Signal/Atria
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
An eclectic assortment of women make for an entertaining read.
An exuberant celebration of more than 100 women who shaped the myths and realities of New York City.
In her debut book, journalist Scelfo, who has written for the New York Times and Newsweek, aims to counter histories of New York that focus only on “male political leaders and male activists and male cultural tastemakers.” As the author discovered and shows, the contributions of women have been deeply significant, and she has chosen a copious roster of personalities, gathered under three dozen rubrics, such as “The Caretakers” (pioneering physicians Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell and Dr. Sara Josephine Baker, who enacted revolutionary hygienic measures in early-20th-century tenements); “The Loudmouths” (Joan Rivers and Better Midler); and “Wall Street” (brokerage firm founder Victoria Woodhull and miserly investor Hetty Green). With a plethora of women to choose from, Scelfo aimed for representation from musical theater, law enforcement, education, social justice movements, and various professions and organizations. Some of the women are familiar (Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis for her preservation work; Brooke Astor for her philanthropy), some iconic (Emma Lazarus, in a category of her own as “The Beacon”), and some little-known (artist Hildreth Meière, whose art deco designs can be seen on the south facade of Radio City Music Hall). One odd category is “The Crooks,” which includes several forgettable women who contributed to the city’s “cons and crimes.” The author’s brief, breezy bios reveal quirky facts about each woman, a form better suited to “The In-Crowd” (restaurateur Elaine Kaufman, hardly a crowd), entertainers (Betty Comden, Ethel Waters), and “The Wisecrackers” (Nora Ephron, Tina Fey) than to Susan Sontag, Edith Wharton, and Joan Didion. Nevertheless, the book is lively and fun, with something, no doubt, to pique anyone’s interest. Heald’s blithe illustrations add to the lighthearted mood.
An eclectic assortment of women make for an entertaining read.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-58005-653-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Seal Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2016
A declaration worth hearing out in a time of growing inequality—and indignity.
Noted number cruncher Sperling delivers an economist’s rejoinder to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Former director of the National Economic Council in the administrations of Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, the author has long taken a view of the dismal science that takes economic justice fully into account. Alongside all the metrics and estimates and reckonings of GDP, inflation, and the supply curve, he holds the great goal of economic policy to be the advancement of human dignity, a concept intangible enough to chase the econometricians away. Growth, the sacred mantra of most economic policy, “should never be considered an appropriate ultimate end goal” for it, he counsels. Though 4% is the magic number for annual growth to be considered healthy, it is healthy only if everyone is getting the benefits and not just the ultrawealthy who are making away with the spoils today. Defining dignity, admits Sperling, can be a kind of “I know it when I see it” problem, but it does not exist where people are a paycheck away from homelessness; the fact, however, that people widely share a view of indignity suggests the “intuitive universality” of its opposite. That said, the author identifies three qualifications, one of them the “ability to meaningfully participate in the economy with respect, not domination and humiliation.” Though these latter terms are also essentially unquantifiable, Sperling holds that this respect—lack of abuse, in another phrasing—can be obtained through a tight labor market and monetary and fiscal policy that pushes for full employment. In other words, where management needs to come looking for workers, workers are likely to be better treated than when the opposite holds. In still other words, writes the author, dignity is in part a function of “ ‘take this job and shove it’ power,” which is a power worth fighting for.
A declaration worth hearing out in a time of growing inequality—and indignity.Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-7987-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
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