An informative and highly engaging exploration of an influential social status dynamic.
How a particular social phenomenon shapes our lives, prospects, and futures.
In modern society, according to UC Berkeley business professor Stuart, “anointment” refers to “a ubiquitous process in which a person or institution of high regard confers status on something or someone else explicitly or simply by association.” (The author readily acknowledges that he is one of the anointed himself.) A Rembrandt painting is considered magnitudes more valuable than an almost indistinguishable reproduction by a no-name artist. This is an example of the “Big Shift,” a term Stuart uses to describe one of the mental shortcuts that anointment allows us to make: We evaluate the worthiness of a person or object by the status or prestige of its affiliations rather than its inherent quality. Unfortunately but unsurprisingly, anointment contributes to inequality. Graduates of a particular elite institution may favor candidates with the same credentials when considering potential job applicants. Individuals who earn reputations as visionaries, such as Elon Musk and Steve Jobs, are often protected from the consequences of their bad behavior and are granted far more benefit of the doubt about their failures. People with low status, frequently members of underserved racial and social groups, lack the networks of anointed individuals that would allow them to gain higher status. However, the myth of American meritocracy persists among individuals of all status levels despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. In a passage describing humans’ proclivity for rankings, Stuart writes: “Tripadvisor ranks hotels and restaurants. People magazine seems to rank everyone.” The author’s boxed summarizations of key points and his academically tinged sense of humor contribute to the approachability of this slim but thorough work. Given his thoroughness, Stuart’s rosy predictions in the closing chapter about how artificial intelligence will revolutionize and democratize human decision-making feel relatively underbaked. Still, his book on the whole ably outlines the necessity for deeper understanding of an intuitive and powerful human behavior.
An informative and highly engaging exploration of an influential social status dynamic.Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2025
ISBN: 9781668001875
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 13, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2025
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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