A well-researched, timely reminder of the centrality of civic engagement to the preservation of democracy.
A political scientist surveys the threat of apathy to democracy in this nonfiction work.
“Given the offensive nature of American politics,” writes Taylor, “perhaps we should be unsurprised that everyday Americans are removing themselves from the political arena.” Per the author, this apathy regarding politics has trickled down to affect all aspects of civic engagement that are critical to thriving democratic societies, from jury duty to community volunteerism. A self-described “accessible scholar,” Taylor opens the book with an introductory essay that counters common misunderstandings about American democracy, such as the claim that “America is a republic, not a democracy” (he likens this absurd but frequently asserted notion to stating that a “Honeycrisp is an apple, not a fruit”). The bulk of the text offers chapter-long discussions of apathy’s negative effects on the pillars of democracy. The topics include obvious categories, such as voting, campaign volunteer work, and advocacy for specific policies, but Taylor also highlights how a gradual withdrawal from politics leads to, for instance, inaccurate polling (while unsolicited polls may be annoying, Taylor emphasizes that they are “critical to our democracy”). A particularly poignant chapter highlights how political apathy translates into avoidance of jury service (one of the most important constitutional pillars), which has profound implications for our justice system. While the book’s contents (including the author’s dire warning that apathy will continue to give way “to a tyranny of the fringes”) are disheartening in many ways, the author expresses hope in the power of average Americans to self-correct in a system that has gone awry. While campaign volunteer work and more overtly political actions are not discouraged, Taylor highlights the ways in which people can reignite a democratic ethos at the grassroots level with small actions that range from embracing jury service and responding to polls to volunteerism and community engagement. The author writes in an accessible style and supports his argument with a wealth of academic and quantitative data.
A well-researched, timely reminder of the centrality of civic engagement to the preservation of democracy.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.
An Egyptian Canadian journalist writes searchingly of this time of war.
“Rules, conventions, morals, reality itself: all exist so long as their existence is convenient to the preservation of power.” So writes El Akkad, who goes on to state that one of the demands of modern power is that those subject to it must imagine that some group of people somewhere are not fully human. El Akkad’s pointed example is Gaza, the current destruction of which, he writes, is causing millions of people around the world to examine the supposedly rules-governed, democratic West and declare, “I want nothing to do with this.” El Akkad, author of the novel American War (2017), discerns hypocrisy and racism in the West’s defense of Ukraine and what he views as indifference toward the Palestinian people. No stranger to war zones himself—El Akkad was a correspondent in Afghanistan and Iraq—he writes with grim matter-of-factness about murdered children, famine, and the deliberate targeting of civilians. With no love for Zionism lost, he offers an equally harsh critique of Hamas, yet another one of the “entities obsessed with violence as an ethos, brutal in their treatment of minority groups who in their view should not exist, and self-decreed to be the true protectors of an entire religion.” Taking a global view, El Akkad, who lives in the U.S., finds almost every government and society wanting, and not least those, he says, that turn away and pretend not to know, behavior that we’ve seen before and that, in the spirit of his title, will one day be explained away until, in the end, it comes down to “a quiet unheard reckoning in the winter of life between the one who said nothing, did nothing, and their own soul.”
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593804148
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
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