A sensible, convincing program to expand voting rights and democratic virtues.
A rousing call for Gens Z and Alpha to leverage technology and save democracy.
“We are in the middle of a five-alarm fire, and mobile voting is the only scalable way to solve the primary turnout problem and put the fire out.” So writes Tusk, who had a variety of political jobs in the last few years, including a stint with fallen Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich, convicted of multiple felonies, who had his 14-year sentence commuted by Donald Trump. Blagojevich, Tusk comments, had "the shockingly crazy and shockingly honest" opinion that his job was “winning elections, not actually being governor.” That leads Tusk to a hard political truth: the only time you matter to a politician is if you can help them win an election. So, he concludes, “the path to a better system is not about personalities, but about incentives....Hold [politicians] accountable for actual progress and actual results. And if they don’t deliver, you’ll throw them out.” Tusk's manifesto is far broader than its title suggests—he proposes term limits to combat political complacency—but the phone-voting piece is important. He has developed a secure voting system that gathers votes by means of encrypted cell messaging and tabulates them in clean rooms not connected to the internet, enhancing security. The system has obvious virtues, not least of them that virtually everyone has a cell phone, while not everyone (Native people on remote reservations, elderly shut-ins, military personnel outside the country, and so forth) can get to the polls. Couple this ease of technology with the fact that by 2028 the combined members of Gen Z and Gen Alpha will number 131 million, “the largest group of eligible voters in the country,” and Tusk sees them as inclined to the left. Small wonder that Republican legislators fear Tusk’s call—and good reason for progressive activists to take it up.
A sensible, convincing program to expand voting rights and democratic virtues.Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2024
ISBN: 9781464221101
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.
Documenting perilous times.
In his most recent behind-the-scenes account of political power and how it is wielded, Woodward synthesizes several narrative strands, from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel to the 2024 presidential campaign. Woodward’s clear, gripping storytelling benefits from his legendary access to prominent figures and a structure of propulsive chapters. The run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is tense (if occasionally repetitive), as a cast of geopolitical insiders try to divine Vladimir Putin’s intent: “Doubt among allies, the public and among Ukrainians meant valuable time and space for Putin to maneuver.” Against this backdrop, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham implores Donald Trump to run again, notwithstanding the former president’s denial of his 2020 defeat. This provides unwelcome distraction for President Biden, portrayed as a thoughtful, compassionate lifetime politico who could not outrace time, as demonstrated in the June 2024 debate. Throughout, Trump’s prevarications and his supporters’ cynicism provide an unsettling counterpoint to warnings provided by everyone from former Joint Chief of Staff Mark Milley to Vice President Kamala Harris, who calls a second Trump term a likely “death knell for American democracy.” The author’s ambitious scope shows him at the top of his capabilities. He concludes with these unsettling words: “Based on my reporting, Trump’s language and conduct has at times presented risks to national security—both during his presidency and afterward.”
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781668052273
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
IN THE NEWS
PERSPECTIVES
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.
Bearing witness to oppression.
Award-winning journalist and MacArthur Fellow Coates probes the narratives that shape our perception of the world through his reports on three journeys: to Dakar, Senegal, the last stop for Black Africans “before the genocide and rebirth of the Middle Passage”; to Chapin, South Carolina, where controversy erupted over a writing teacher’s use of Between the World and Me in class; and to Israel and Palestine, where he spent 10 days in a “Holy Land of barbed wire, settlers, and outrageous guns.” By addressing the essays to students in his writing workshop at Howard University in 2022, Coates makes a literary choice similar to the letter to his son that informed Between the World and Me; as in that book, the choice creates a sense of intimacy between writer and reader. Interweaving autobiography and reportage, Coates examines race, his identity as a Black American, and his role as a public intellectual. In Dakar, he is haunted by ghosts of his ancestors and “the shade of Niggerology,” a pseudoscientific narrative put forth to justify enslavement by portraying Blacks as inferior. In South Carolina, the 22-acre State House grounds, dotted with Confederate statues, continue to impart a narrative of white supremacy. His trip to the Middle East inspires the longest and most impassioned essay: “I don’t think I ever, in my life, felt the glare of racism burn stranger and more intense than in Israel,” he writes. In his complex analysis, he sees the trauma of the Holocaust playing a role in Israel’s tactics in the Middle East: “The wars against the Palestinians and their Arab allies were a kind of theater in which ‘weak Jews’ who went ‘like lambs to slaughter’ were supplanted by Israelis who would ‘fight back.’” Roiled by what he witnessed, Coates feels speechless, unable to adequately convey Palestinians’ agony; their reality “demands new messengers, tasked as we all are, with nothing less than saving the world.”
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9780593230381
Page Count: 176
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
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