A more positive view of Donald Trump than most Americans have—though the text ends with the election.
Two journalists team up, conduct more than 100 interviews with key figures in (and out of) Camp Trump, and conclude his decision to run for president was far from impulsive.
In Hamlet, Polonius said of the prince’s psychological state, “though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.” Salkin (From Scratch: Inside the Food Network, 2013, etc.) and Short, both of whom have written for the New York Post, set out to prove that the same is true of President Donald Trump. The text comprises snippets of interviews with a variety of sources, from Al Sharpton and Gloria Allred to Anthony Scaramucci and Steve Bannon. (The entire list of contributors, which includes journalists, political figures, and advisers, consumes eight pages.) The authors also chime in continually throughout the 32 chapters. They endeavor to show a different Trump than the one many imagine. Here is a man who takes notes during meetings (!), is a sharp questioner, often displays a long attention span, was willing to alter his positions to appeal to his base, and flirted with running for political office any number of times (including governor of New York) but who always changed his mind. The authors elicit praise from those who are/were close to him, such as Bannon and Tucker Carlson. Not every interview subject, of course, has fond memories, and readers with Trump fatigue should stay away. Some contributors comment about his arrogance (taking credit for “Make America Great Again”—a slogan Ronald Reagan had used), fondness for attractive women, and thin skin. He was, for example, friendly with the Clintons until candidate Hillary seemed to blame his positions for the 2015 South Carolina church shooting. So the escalator ride down to his announcement was thoroughly planned, even inevitable. Other contributors include Katie Couric, David Cay Johnston, Glenn Beck, Ralph Nader, and Roger Stone.
A more positive view of Donald Trump than most Americans have—though the text ends with the election.Pub Date: July 9, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-20280-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: All Points/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 11, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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