A strong argument for civic reengagement.
Why the future of democracy is in peril.
Nichols, a columnist for USA Today, contributing writing at the Atlantic, and professor at the U.S. Naval War College, joins other recent political analysts in decrying the weakening of democracy, laying the blame on Americans’ lack of engagement in political life, ignorance of issues, and failure to contribute to the common good. “When we disengage from society and ignore our civic obligations, we are bad citizens,” he writes. The American voter exemplifies a “politics of narrow self-interest” blended with “general cynicism” about government, politicians, and even their fellow Americans. The author’s assessment of the general political landscape is more persuasive than his analysis that disengagement stems from the “peace, affluence, and technological progress” which has afforded most people too much leisure, making them materialistic and narcissistic. With nothing to challenge them, they long “for a great struggle that could give drama and deeper meaning.” This yearning for conflict leads to anger, nostalgia, and social revenge—all sentiments fomented by the populist right. When enough people are “continually angry, entitled, and conspiracy-addled,” Nichols writes, “civic life becomes impossible.” As an example of what a narcissistic community looks like, the author offers a portrait of Chiaramonte, a village in southern Italy that was documented in the 1950s. Widely distrusting politicians and the clergy, the residents cared only for themselves and their families—a tribalism that Nichols sees increasingly in the U.S. Nichols attests to having faith in the durability of liberal democracy, suggesting several ways to revive citizenship: parties should “remain grounded in identifiable principles” instead of being “megaphones for the most vocal activists within them”; young people should be required to fulfill a “summer of service” in the military; and electoral and constitutional reform should include statehood for Puerto Rico and D.C., expanding the House. “In a liberal democracy,” he writes, “citizens are masters of their fate.”
A strong argument for civic reengagement.Pub Date: Aug. 19, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-19-751887-8
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: June 9, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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