An informative, adulatory look at a grassroots candidacy galvanizing young voters and reshaping urban politics.
Shaking up Gotham politics.
The subject of this knowledgeable, timely, proudly partisan portrait—a millennial, Democratic Socialist state legislator from Queens—“upended” the establishment in June, defeating well-known opponents in the Democratic mayoral primary in America’s biggest city. The author, an academic and journalist, doesn’t pretend to be objective, and his support for Mamdani informs some debatable assertions. But Hamm’s impressive command of granular details and broader trends makes this a key text for understanding contemporary left-of-center politics and New York City’s upcoming general election, in which Mamdani, who turns 34 in October 2025, tries to become New York’s youngest mayor in a century. Hamm interviewed Mamdani at length and attended many campaign events, noticing how the “always…on-message” candidate’s pledge to freeze rents, make city buses free, and provide universal child care resonated with voters. Tens of thousands of volunteers, lots of them young, pitched in. Backing from many small donors unlocked millions in matching funds from the city. Leveraging its “top-flight social media game,” Mamdani’s team orchestrated buzzy events. A video of his ride with a cabbie friend has been viewed more than 300,000 times. The Ugandan-born Mamdani also reached out to residents “in dozens of native languages, from Arabic to Vietnamese,” winning votes from oft-overlooked communities. Meanwhile, he withstood attacks on his Muslim faith, false charges of antisemitism, and death threats. Hamm makes big claims, stating that Mamdani’s “outreach operation” was “far more genuinely committed to its candidate than that of any mayoral contender in New York City history.” Maybe so, but the author offers no hard evidence. More persuasively, he argues that unlike some prominent Democrats, Mamdani triumphed by paying “close attention to the struggles faced by countless working-class people,” radiating “vitality” and “optimism” along the way.
An informative, adulatory look at a grassroots candidacy galvanizing young voters and reshaping urban politics.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781682194461
Page Count: 160
Publisher: OR Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 11, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
