An illuminating if unsettling account of what it takes to run “the largest and most complex organization in the entire...
The former secretary of defense delivers a lucid explanation of how the Department of Defense operates.
A theoretical physicist who became interested in international affairs, Carter (Director/Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Keeping the Edge: Managing Defense for the Future, 2001, etc.) entered government service in 1993 as President Bill Clinton’s assistant secretary of defense for international security policy and eventually became President Barack Obama’s secretary of defense in 2015. Specializing in international security, nuclear policy, and weapons procurement, the author considers himself a technocrat rather than a political operative. Though he was first appointed by a Democrat and was never appointed by a Republican, he accomplishes the impressive feat of soothing conservatives by emphasizing that private enterprise is the most efficient source of our military’s goods and services. “Business is business,” he writes, “and if they are to succeed…they need to mind their bottom lines. The taxpayer shares an interest in their viability.” Carter also soothes liberals by agreeing that, absent strict government oversight, companies pad their profits, drag their feet, and have no objection to bribery if it is deemed useful. Even out of office, he provided expertise to all administrations and remained on good terms with even highly conservative leaders. His evaluation of all presidents since Ronald Reagan is never less than mildly favorable, with one exception that will surprise few readers. His major criticism of Donald Trump is that he despises experts who disagree with him. Readers will squirm to learn the difficulties of keeping our nation secure, which, even in the good old days, was hobbled as much as helped by members of Congress who gave their own interests priority over the nation’s and journalists who preferred scandal to substance. Today, with Congress nearly paralyzed and journalism dumbed down by the internet, it’s even more difficult.
An illuminating if unsettling account of what it takes to run “the largest and most complex organization in the entire world.”Pub Date: June 11, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5247-4391-8
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: April 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
The book begins in Sri Lanka with the tsunami of 2004—a horror the author saw firsthand, and the aftermath of which he...
The latest from French writer/filmmaker Carrère (My Life as a Russian Novel, 2010, etc.) is an awkward but intermittently touching hybrid of novel and autobiography.
The book begins in Sri Lanka with the tsunami of 2004—a horror the author saw firsthand, and the aftermath of which he describes powerfully. Carrère and his partner, Hélène, then return to Paris—and do so with a mutual devotion that's been renewed and deepened by all they've witnessed. Back in France, Hélène's sister Juliette, a magistrate and mother of three small daughters, has suffered a recurrence of the cancer that crippled her in adolescence. After her death, Carrère decides to write an oblique tribute and an investigation into the ravages of grief. He focuses first on Juliette's colleague and intimate friend Étienne, himself an amputee and survivor of childhood cancer, and a man in whose talkativeness and strength Carrère sees parallels to himself ("He liked to talk about himself. It's my way, he said, of talking to and about others, and he remarked astutely that it was my way, too”). Étienne is a perceptive, dignified person and a loyal, loving friend, and Carrère's portrait of him—including an unexpectedly fascinating foray into Étienne and Juliette's chief professional accomplishment, which was to tap the new European courts for help in overturning longtime French precedents that advantaged credit-card companies over small borrowers—is impressive. Less successful is Carrère's account of Juliette's widower, Patrice, an unworldly cartoonist whom he admires for his fortitude but seems to consider something of a simpleton. Now and again, especially in the Étienne sections, Carrère's meditations pay off in fresh, pungent insights, and his account of Juliette's last days and of the aftermath (especially for her daughters) is quietly harrowing.Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-8050-9261-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Metropolitan/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Aug. 10, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2011
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
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