Somewhat repetitive, but with useful lessons on cultural accommodation and coexistence.
An anthropologist examines ways in which ingrained notions of belonging and difference can be put to work for the good.
The notion that humans are by nature tribal beings fell into some disrepute after World War II, before which it was common to essentialize: Germans are naturally warlike, Americans naturally forward-looking. “These approaches reduced cultures to stable patterns,” writes Morris, but cultures are instead in constant change, especially with globalization. So to with tribes—around the world, a sort of default form of social organization, bound by associations of families and clans into larger but still manageable polities. “In these nested groups our forebears first felt the exciting and empowering experience of connection to myriad individuals and ideas, the ongoing experiment that we call ‘society,’” Morris writes. Some of those ideas yield “in-group” pressures to conform, while others help create traditions, formal or informal, that are often quite revealing. In this last regard, it’s interesting to learn that sales of macaroni and cheese skyrocketed after 9/11, a reversion to comfort food in the wake of catastrophe. Given that in-group pressures can turn deeply negative in some instances, such as the current anti-immigration impulse sweeping the U.S. and Europe and indeed the inability of “red” and “blue” constituents to talk with each other, Morris counsels seeking ways to make room for other tribes, altering, as he puts it, a “culture fit” stance to a “culture add” policy. While such talk is sure to rile the anti-DEI crowd, Morris urges readers to remember that, again, cultures evolve to adapt to new situations and can do so positively—as when, in one of his examples, Catalonians figured out a way to incorporate Muslims into a traditional festival that featured local pork sausage by broadening the celebration to include locally made but also halal cheeses.
Somewhat repetitive, but with useful lessons on cultural accommodation and coexistence.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9780735218093
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Thesis/Penguin
Review Posted Online: July 10, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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