A masterful blend of narrative history and empathetic reporting.
The author of They Can’t Kill Us All returns with a timely investigation into the historic roots of violent White resistance to non-White Americans.
“OBAMA: RACIAL BARRIER FALLS IN DECISIVE VICTORY.” That was the headline in the New York Times the morning after the 2008 presidential election. Within a matter of weeks, news outlets across the country would be offering headlines like this: “Obama Election Spurs Race Crimes Around Country” (AP); “Obama Win Sparks Rise in Hate Crimes, Violence” (NPR); “Hatemongers Poised to Exploit Obama Election, Tough Economic Times” (Southern Poverty Law Center). It seems easy to find a throughline from the election of the first Black president of the U.S. to the xenophobia and racial animus that were hallmarks of the Trump years. To help us understand how we got here, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Lowery provides a potent consideration of the past 15 years within the context of American history. He shows how White supremacists have evolved from positioning themselves as defenders of the status quo to radicalism. “Today’s white supremacist movement is revolutionary—its explicit aim being to overthrow our maturing multiracial democracy,” he writes. As he tracks the historical threads of this movement, he offers compassionate and often heartbreaking profiles of the lives of contemporary individuals who have been irreparably harmed by the latest rise in White supremacist violence. Lowery has written extensively about the aftermath of Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson, Missouri—he was even arrested while covering the protests—and some of the stories he covers will be familiar to readers. The murder of Charlottesville protestor Heather Heyer and the mass shooting at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Illinois, commanded significant media coverage. But Lowery provides urgent, necessary perspective on these events while also shining a light on deaths that fail to capture national attention because such deaths, sadly, feel quotidian.
A masterful blend of narrative history and empathetic reporting.Pub Date: June 27, 2023
ISBN: 9780358393269
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Mariner Books
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
The choir is sure to enjoy this impassioned preaching on familiar progressive themes.
Essays on current political topics by a high-profile actor and activist.
Milano explains in an introduction that she began writing this uneven collection while dealing with a severe case of Covid-19 and suffering from "persistent brain fog.” In the first essay, "On Being Unapologetically Fucked Up,” the author begins by fuming over a February 2019 incident in which she compared MAGA caps worn by high school kids to KKK hoods. She then runs through a grab bag of flash-point news items (police shootings, border crimes, sexual predators in government), deploying the F-bomb with abandon and concluding, "What I know is that fucked up is as fundamental a state of the world as night and day. But I know there is better. I know that ‘less fucked up’ is a state we can live in.” The second essay, "Believe Women," discusses Milano’s seminal role in the MeToo movement; unfortunately, it is similarly conversational in tone and predictable in content. One of the few truly personal essays, "David," about the author's marriage, refutes the old saw about love meaning never having to say you're sorry, replacing it with "Love means you can suggest a national sex strike and your husband doesn't run away screaming." Milano assumes, perhaps rightly, that her audience is composed of followers and fans; perhaps these readers will know what she is talking about in the seemingly allegorical "By Any Other Name," about her bad experience with a certain rosebush. "Holy shit, giving birth sucked," begins one essay. "Words are weird, right?" begins the next. "Welp, this is going to piss some of you off. Hang in there," opens a screed about cancel culture—though she’s entirely correct that “it’s childish, divisive, conceited, and Trumpian to its core.” By the end, however, Milano's intelligence, compassion, integrity, and endurance somewhat compensate for her lack of literary polish.
The choir is sure to enjoy this impassioned preaching on familiar progressive themes.Pub Date: Oct. 26, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-18329-8
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.
Known for her often contentious perspectives, New York Times opinion writer Weiss battles societal Jewish intolerance through lucid prose and a linear playbook of remedies.
While she was vividly aware of anti-Semitism throughout her life, the reality of the problem hit home when an active shooter stormed a Pittsburgh synagogue where her family regularly met for morning services and where she became a bat mitzvah years earlier. The massacre that ensued there further spurred her outrage and passionate activism. She writes that European Jews face a three-pronged threat in contemporary society, where physical, moral, and political fears of mounting violence are putting their general safety in jeopardy. She believes that Americans live in an era when “the lunatic fringe has gone mainstream” and Jews have been forced to become “a people apart.” With palpable frustration, she adroitly assesses the origins of anti-Semitism and how its prevalence is increasing through more discreet portals such as internet self-radicalization. Furthermore, the erosion of civility and tolerance and the demonization of minorities continue via the “casual racism” of political figures like Donald Trump. Following densely political discourses on Zionism and radical Islam, the author offers a list of bullet-point solutions focused on using behavioral and personal action items—individual accountability, active involvement, building community, loving neighbors, etc.—to help stem the tide of anti-Semitism. Weiss sounds a clarion call to Jewish readers who share her growing angst as well as non-Jewish Americans who wish to arm themselves with the knowledge and intellectual tools to combat marginalization and defuse and disavow trends of dehumanizing behavior. “Call it out,” she writes. “Especially when it’s hard.” At the core of the text is the author’s concern for the health and safety of American citizens, and she encourages anyone “who loves freedom and seeks to protect it” to join with her in vigorous activism.
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-593-13605-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2019
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