The longest-serving independent politician chronicles his ongoing fight for progressive legislation.
Following up his previous books urging a progressive agenda, Vermont Sen. Sanders (Bernie Sanders Guide to Political Revolution, 2017, etc.) recounts his activities from June 14, 2016, when Hillary Clinton won the party’s nomination, ending his own presidential campaign, to Aug. 25, 2018, when the Democratic National Committee approved a major reform that eliminated superdelegates from impacting the first ballot at a presidential convention. Besides dealing with the intractable Trump administration, the author regrets that he faces lack of knowledge and, often, interest among the populace. “Political consciousness in the United States is low,” he writes. “Many people don’t vote, while many others don’t have a clue as to which political party controls the Senate or the House.” He faults “corporate media”—profit-making entities controlled by the wealthy—for disseminating biased information. Even on mainstream TV, though, he is never asked about “the dynamics of wealth and power that shape our nation” or about health care or income inequality, but instead about Trump’s latest tweet or a recent disaster. To counter these narrow perspectives, on Jan. 23, 2018, Sanders convened a 90-minute town hall meeting, which presented several panels discussing health care before an audience of around 450 people; the event was streamed online, reaching about 1 million viewers. The author includes speeches he has delivered around the country and excerpts from interviews in diarylike entries that focus on issues such as taxation, the environment, education, criminal justice, gun control, immigration, military spending, and foreign policy. He underscores his belief that change “never comes from the top on down, but always from the grassroots on up.” He is heartened by recent primary victories: mayoral candidate Ben Jealous in Maryland, for example, and congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in New York. With hundreds of progressive candidates emerging in the 2018 races, he believes voters will reinvigorate a nation “that resonates with love, hope, and prosperity.”
A hopeful view of America’s uncertain future.Pub Date: Nov. 27, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-250-16326-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
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A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
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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. 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
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The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 6, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
Categories: BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | UNITED STATES | HISTORY | CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | ETHNICITY & RACE
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