Forward-looking, heartfelt spiritual guidance.
Papal reflections on the global pandemic and other pressing matters.
In his latest book, Pope Francis provides a brief, earnest discussion regarding the Covid-19 virus’ effects on the world and how humanity—and people of faith especially—can respond. One cannot approach this work, which was written in conjunction with the pope’s biographer, Ivereigh, without being reminded of John Paul II’s groundbreaking Crossing the Threshold of Hope (1994), which was also co-authored by a journalist. The book is divided into three parts (plus an epilogue), calling on readers to observe the problem, discern the way forward, and then take action. “The see-judge-act method has been used often by the Latin American Church to respond to change,” writes Ivereigh in the postscript. “Francis had reformulated it in different terms (‘contemplate-discern-propose’) but it was essentially the same approach.” Francis sees in the Covid-19 crisis a danger of narcissism for those who refuse to see it as a global catastrophe or who put self above neighbor in their actions and priorities regarding the pandemic. Somewhat awkwardly, he also explains the thoughtful blessings that such a societal “stoppage” can provide for people, and he hearkens back to the stories of Paul and David, and even his own life, for inspiration. In the section on discernment, the author calls upon Christians to identify and choose the voice of God during these uncertain times: “When we find where God’s mercy is waiting to overflow, we can open the gates, and work with all people of goodwill to bring about the necessary changes.” Regarding action, Francis emphasizes the importance of community and restoring the dignity of “the people.” We must actively seek out healing. “This is the time,” he asserts, “to restore an ethics of fraternity and solidarity, regenerating the bonds of trust and belonging. Only the face of another is capable of awakening the best of ourselves. In serving the people, we save ourselves.”
Forward-looking, heartfelt spiritual guidance.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-982171-86-5
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
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