A fiery polemic against “capitalist science” that is fascinating if not always persuasive.
Our health is “inseparable from our ecology.”
At a time when institutionalized medicine competes with what one can find on Google, some have sought solace in traditional healing and ideals of social wholeness. Katz, an assistant professor of American culture and digital studies at the University of Michigan, finds his journey to wellness in the traditions of Jewish radicalism. (The title of his book means “to wholeness” in Hebrew.) Jewish radicals of the 19th and early 20th centuries advocated a communitarian life, in which resources were evenly distributed and in which care would be available to all. These radicals, writes Katz, “challenged capitalist science and medicine in profound ways.” In the words of the 19th-century socialist Aaron Shmuel Lieberman, the goal was “to unite the people around wholeness for everyone and create a kingdom of labor, fraternity, and integrity.” But this is not a book of calm and healing; it’s a work of righteous anger and resistance. The author makes the sweeping argument that diseases are caused by capitalism itself, by the profit motives of Big Pharma and big science: “The understanding of ‘public health’ we get is impoverished, incapable of addressing, for example, the infectious diseases that periodically and unevenly ravage us.” Medicine, he adds, “isn’t concerned with how daily life under capitalism produces a complex tangle of illnesses for certain people. Instead, scientists and doctors are trained to be reductionists, to focus on ‘causes’ of disease that can be isolated in the lab (and ideally, made into patentable products).” Katz seeks to synthesize a powerful anti-institutional argument with Jewish traditions of radical political action and herbalism. In the end, though, this analysis loses strength when stretched into an even broader critique of the state of Israel itself as a threat to political health.
A fiery polemic against “capitalist science” that is fascinating if not always persuasive.Pub Date: June 2, 2026
ISBN: 9780814352342
Page Count: 460
Publisher: Wayne State Univ. Press
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2026
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.
In which the veteran humorist enters middle age with fine snark but some trepidation as well.
Mortality is weighing on Sedaris (Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002, 2017, etc.), much of it his own, professional narcissist that he is. Watching an elderly man have a bowel accident on a plane, he dreaded the day when he would be the target of teenagers’ jokes “as they raise their phones to take my picture from behind.” A skin tumor troubled him, but so did the doctor who told him he couldn’t keep it once it was removed. “But it’s my tumor,” he insisted. “I made it.” (Eventually, he found a semitrained doctor to remove and give him the lipoma, which he proceeded to feed to a turtle.) The deaths of others are much on the author’s mind as well: He contemplates the suicide of his sister Tiffany, his alcoholic mother’s death, and his cantankerous father’s erratic behavior. His contemplation of his mother’s drinking—and his family’s denial of it—makes for some of the most poignant writing in the book: The sound of her putting ice in a rocks glass increasingly sounded “like a trigger being cocked.” Despite the gloom, however, frivolity still abides in the Sedaris clan. His summer home on the Carolina coast, which he dubbed the Sea Section, overspills with irreverent bantering between him and his siblings as his long-suffering partner, Hugh, looks on. Sedaris hasn’t lost his capacity for bemused observations of the people he encounters. For example, cashiers who say “have a blessed day” make him feel “like you’ve been sprayed against your will with God cologne.” But bad news has sharpened the author’s humor, and this book is defined by a persistent, engaging bafflement over how seriously or unseriously to take life when it’s increasingly filled with Trump and funerals.
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-39238-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
PROFILES
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
