A useful primer on political fascism, but less impressive as an introduction to Muslim thought.
A contentious debut critique of Islamism.
In his debut book, Foltney makes the argument that Islam isn’t a religion at all, and that it’s better understood as a form of fascism. He discusses the history of fascism, which includes concise but illuminating accounts of Nazi ideology, North Korean Stalinism, Soviet Communism, and Japanese militarism, identifying the key features common to all iterations. One of the principal strengths of this study is the care with which he distinguishes fascism from totalitarianism: the former includes the latter, he says, but also emphasizes pervasive propaganda, a dogmatic monopoly on political orthodoxy, and a toxic combination of faux populism and jingoistic nationalism. He goes on to note that fascism is driven by appeals to alienation and disenfranchisement at the level of race and nationality, rather than economic class, primarily. Foltney assesses some of the failures and triumphs of American strategy in combating Islamist terrorism and says that mainstream media disseminates falsehoods out of deference to “political correctness.” The author details what he sees as the illiberalism of Islamist doctrine and is especially strong when discussing Islamism’s oppression of women and intolerance for dissent. Although Islamism is the central subject of his critique, he provocatively avers that Roman Catholicism during the Middle Ages counts as politically fascistic, too. However, Foltney is less rigorous when discussing the whole of the Muslim faith and the Koran, which he too facilely reduces to political barbarism without offering a deep, searching analysis of primary texts. Also, his interpretation of religion seems more postulated than argued; it’s not entirely clear why tolerant, apolitical Christianity is deemed the model for religion, for example. The author sometimes undermines his otherwise careful analysis with strident, ad hominem rhetoric about “willingly ignorant” people on the left of the American political spectrum. Fascism is a term that’s used too promiscuously in contemporary political debate, typically as an imprecise synonym for authoritarianism; Foltney is to be commended for parsing its meaning. However, his failure to distinguish the Muslim religion from its violently political appropriation, or even seriously entertain the possibility of a distinction between the two, is disappointing.
A useful primer on political fascism, but less impressive as an introduction to Muslim thought.Pub Date: April 29, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5307-4405-3
Page Count: 286
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 3, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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