A politically charged, thoughtfully reasoned call to rally around the flag—and not the Stars and Bars, to be sure.
It’s 2022—high time, Phillips urges, to finally defeat the Confederacy.
We must choose “between democracy and whiteness,” writes Phillips, author of Brown Is the New White. The democracy of which he writes is an anti–White supremacist, multiracial, and multicultural one. The Whiteness is that of the Confederate constitution, exemplified by the declaration of the Confederacy’s vice president that “the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition.” Though there’s some stridency to Phillips’ argument, it’s not hyperbolic. The emergence of a neo-Confederate White supremacist movement, abetted by the Trump administration, and recent Republican efforts to suppress the ethnic-minority vote are of a piece with the past. Phillips characterizes this continuity as the product of a “Confederate Battle Plan” that has five major planks, including never giving an inch while insisting, say, that elections have been stolen and White people disenfranchised, as well as “rewriting the laws so that they don’t lose again.” Inimical to a true multiracial democracy, this battle plan has been refined and sharpened—and it’s in place today. Against it, Phillips proposes a “Liberation Battle Plan” with components that include the demand that Democrats stop trying to accommodate and compromise with those “who are waging an unrelenting, centuries-long war in defense of their cherished belief that America should be a white nation.” Leading this battle in its most recent skirmishes are Black activists, particularly Black women such as Georgia’s Stacey Abrams. These leaders “don’t look like the traditional white male model of intelligence and competence,” but they are obviously capable of unexpected victories, aided by smart use of hard data and clearly defined plans of attack, all in the interest of arriving at “a social contract for the society we want to live in.”
A politically charged, thoughtfully reasoned call to rally around the flag—and not the Stars and Bars, to be sure.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-62097-676-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: The New Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 9, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
