Repetitive in places but not fatally so—a forceful, readable manifesto.
The celebrated Mexican-American journalist takes on the anti-immigration tenor of the Trump era.
On Aug. 25, 2015, Donald Trump had the author removed from a press conference in Iowa, telling him, “go back to Univision.” Already well-known for his role as anchor at that network, Ramos (Take a Stand: Lessons from Rebels, 2016, etc.) was thrust further into the spotlight following the incident, an experience that also led him to further soul-searching regarding his status as a legal immigrant in an increasingly anti-immigrant political and social landscape. Here, the author attempts to synthesize his thoughts about our present state of affairs and how, “to many people, I represent the Other.” The concept of the Other recurs throughout the book, which contains much similar material to his previous one and suffers from repetition and uneven organization near the end. Nonetheless, Ramos’ message is powerful and vital. “Almost all of us here are either immigrants or the descendants of foreigners,” writes the author, “and that has always helped us to cross borders and exceed the limits of what we thought was possible.” In brief chapters, some of which have been previously published or reworked, Ramos uses both personal storytelling and concrete data to demonstrate the absolute necessity of immigrants to the success of the U.S. as a nation. (In strictly economic terms, one estimate notes that immigrants “pay $90 billion in taxes, while using only $5 billion in public benefits.”) Of course, in the current climate of fake news, facts and figures are often ignored or distorted—something Ramos fully recognizes—but he diligently hammers them home anyway. Among other topics in these essays, the author discusses the proposed border wall, “the geography of stupidity”; Barack Obama’s lamentable deportation track record; his disappointment with the Latino voter turnout in the 2016 election; the tenuous status of undocumented workers (he dedicates the book to “the Dreamers, my heroes”); and the prospects for his children’s future.
Repetitive in places but not fatally so—a forceful, readable manifesto.Pub Date: March 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-56379-2
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Vintage
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2018
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
PERSPECTIVES
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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